


Queen Square Cases (1874-1876)

by Cerdic519



Series: The Diaries Of Sherlock Holmes [2]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: England (Country), F/M, Family, Friendship, Inheritance, Justice, London, M/M, Slow Burn, Trauma, University, Victorian, Wales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28855596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: 1874 (cont.)THE 'GLORIA SCOTT' CASE – their first real case togetherALL'S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR – Sherlock helps his brother Carl1875SECOND-CLASS MURDER -  a body on a trainDECK THE HALLS – a seaside seat caseLOVE THY NEIGHBOUR – Sherlock inherits some itemsTHE TARLETON TRAGEDY – two deaths at collegeTHE MENACE FROM MAES-Y-CWMMER – Sherlock helps Stanley Hopkins1876GUNS AND ROSES – the Davenokes of Shoreswood HallAN EYE-WATERING MYSTERY – Sherlock smells a cover-upHANGING WITH OSWALD – Doctor Moore Agar's tree
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Series: The Diaries Of Sherlock Holmes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112249
Comments: 26
Kudos: 6





	1. The 'Gloria Scott' Case

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CabinChick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CabinChick/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> September 1874. The first case in which Sherlock and John actually worked together. The detective has to solve the disappearance of a whole set of nautical-themed treasures and duly does so – but his solution is not to the liking of everyone, and will ensure that the duo's first time together is unexpectedly curtailed.

Despite our family home now lying in ruins and two of my siblings now lying in hospital (although Randall and Guilford would both make full recoveries, worse luck), it was fortunate indeed that I was able to move straight into my rooms in Queen Square, even if they were within walking distance of our temporary residence. And Mother's dreadful stories, but one could not have everything. Luckily the main room had an excellent view of Queen Anne's Walk which led back to Guilford Street and there was also a fire-escape, so provided that I saw Mother coming I could always make a swift exit.

Since my new home would technically qualify as one of my residences I suppose that I had better describe the area. It was very quiet considering how close it was to the centre of London, which may have been why the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic¹ had been built along its northern side (mercifully not where my two injured siblings were staying!). There was a very elegant church dedicated to St. George the Martyr although I did not like the vicar there, the Reverend Ryan, when he boasted to me about the statue of Queen Anne in the square. I pointed out to him that given that monarch's box-like dimensions (I did not normally know such things but Mother had mentioned the fact when musing on whether to write a story about that time; fortunately for my sanity she had decided against it), it was clearly not her. He was most annoyed, and even more so when the experts he called in to tell him that he was right were instead able to identify the lady as Queen Charlotte, consort to the mad King George the Third.

The square itself was very pleasant, a little over a hundred yards long but only some twenty-five yards across. Two roads led away from the southern corners towards the City but it was very quiet; my landlady Mrs. Leadbetter told me that there was no connecting road north because it had originally been intended to be a vista into open country. Until the relentlessly-expanding London had had other ideas!

Mrs. Leadbetter herself was I felt a little odd, or at least her husband was. All right, as someone who knew my mother I supposed that she was entitled to some oddness, but still. She and her husband were both nondescript people of about forty years of age, and always looked furtive for some reason. Perhaps Mother had told them of my plans to become a consulting-detective; I had observed that that made both the innocent and guilty uneasy. Although few people were really innocent, in my opinion.

MDCCCLXXIV

Very unusually I found it difficult to settle back in on my return to Oxford, even though my mood was improved by the imminent arrival of Watson. The morning of that arrival found me in a rather poor state even given that I did not like mornings on principle. I had had a particularly rough night, not helped by some strange dream about someone who looked like me and yet was not me, which was of course quite illogical. No-one looked like me, I was sure of that. And now Stamford was forking me over extra bacon, without my even having to look at him.

I stared suspiciously at my room-mate.

“What do you want?” I asked (I did _not_ snarl). 

“You said to remind you that our mutual friend is arriving this evening”, he said, looking far too awake for any gentleman Before Coffee. “John will have three weeks off before he had to get back to his dry text-books; he will need it after everything that he had been through.”

I thought wryly that given the snail's pace that lawyers moved at most times, my friend had been fortunate that the innate survival instincts of such gentlemen meant that when one Sir Edward Holmes, Baronet, requested that one got a move on, one got a move on if only because not to do so might well have elicited a visit from the good lady wife of Sir Edward Holmes, Baronet. With one or more of her stories. It may or may not be true that fear keeps many people honest, but it is most definitely the case that abject terror makes one work flat out to avoid the sort of horror that might land one in therapy for years! But Stamford was still an annoying cove, although I supposed that he was tolerable enough apart from his eternal whining about my untidiness, my general appearance, my lack of social graces, my very slight incoherence before coffee of a morning, my violin-playing, my pistol-shooting, my....

 _Why was I putting up with him again?_ Oh yes, he remembered what I liked, such as bacon of a morning and coffee. The most important things in life.

“Unfortunately I shall be out all day looking into this run of thefts around the colleges”, I said. “I will not be back until late so I will likely see him tomorrow. I am sure that he will somehow contain his terrible disappointment at that.”

He shook his head at me but smiled. More importantly he passed me the ketchup. As I said, he was good for some things, but it was still a reflection on my generous nature that I put up with him.

MDCCCLXXIV

One of the skills that a consulting-detective needs is the ability to sense when something is not right. There had been a spate of thefts around the various Oxford colleges of late and there had seemed to be a common thread running through them all, which if the next one happened as I expected would appear to have been confirmed. Yet I was not convinced. I would encounter a number of serial killers in my time and while some of them were genuine, others would be using a series of crimes to conceal one in particular, what my annoying sister Moira called 'hiding a leaf in the forest'. This from someone who would not have known one end of a tree from the other!

Not that I would have dared tell her that!

The first theft had been three weeks back at Queen's. Someone had broken into their library and stolen a book about Greek naval warfare. This in itself had itself raised my suspicions, the item taken had been a relatively inexpensive one and there had been much richer pickings nearby. My little experience in such matters told me that thieves who went after this sort of thing tended to have specific targets and nearly always expensive ones, so it seemed strange. There was also the curious fact that the gap in the bookshelf had not been filled with something else which was why the theft had been discovered the very next day; it would have been the work of a moment to have put another book there or merely shuffled the existing books along, and the theft might then have gone undetected for weeks or even months. Unless of course the motive had been partly that the crime _would_ be detected almost at once.

Two weeks back the thief had struck at Corpus Christi, which given the stuffed shirts that I had encountered the one time I had been unfortunate to have to go over there, was something that had elicited my interest but not my sympathy. The item taken had been a small painting of an Elizabethan warship from the museum store-room. This was rather more valuable than the book and this time the thief had made a conscious effort to ensure that the theft was discovered, leaving the door of the cupboard where the painting had been stored wide open. And again there was one particularly valuable painting that the thieves walked right past and was (or so I was told) famous, so the thief must surely have known about it.

Last week it had been Lincoln's turn, and the thieves had seemed to be getting bolder in their apparent naval ambitions. A valuable large silver tureen was taken from the main hall; it was reportedly decorated with a naval battle scene from some ancient war. The college newspaper noted that it was more valuable than the first two items combined, and that security around the colleges was being stepped up.

I had my own ideas about what was afoot here and focussed my attentions on one item in one particular college which, I suspected, might well be the next or at most the next but one target. Interestingly the security around said item did not seem to have been particularly increased, which I found curious. I would much rather have stayed and greeted Watson but he would be here for three weeks and since these thefts were happening on the same day every week, I fully expected the next one to happen tomorrow. Which meant that I needed to question certain people and know certain things as a matter of urgency. Botheration!

MDCCCLXXIV

I had hoped that if I was quick enough I could still have returned to our rooms and met Watson that evening, but one of my inquiries most irksomely took me as far afield as Abingdon and on the last train of the day, which meant that I had to walk to Radley Junction and catch a goods train back to Oxford. At least my inquiries had been fruitful and if what I expected to happen that night did happen, then all might still be well.

I re-entered our rooms quietly, more in consideration of our visitor than Stamford who could sleep through a thunderstorm (and indeed had the other week). Watson would however be in the spare room which was little more than a glorified cupboard but at least had a bed, even if it took up half the room. I was not feeling at all sleepy so I moved over to the bookshelf to find something to take to bed with me. 

I had thought that I was being quiet but I definitely heard the sound of someone moving about in the spare room, then the sound of the door to it slowly opening. Apparently John Hamish Watson was striding into battle to deal with a night-time intruder. 

Our visitor moved more quickly across the room than I had expected but I still evaded his lunge and wrestled him to the floor. He was slightly shorter but heavier than me; however I held him down easily enough despite his protests. To my surprise (read astonishment) the living dead emerged from his own bedroom looking even worse than I very occasionally did on the odd morning or two.

_“Sherlock?”_

I left a surprised visitor on the floor as Stamford turned on the standing-lamp. Watson was clearly trying to recover his dignity having come out second in our brief struggle, and from the look on my room-mate's face I envisaged that someone was in for a certain amount of teasing tomorrow.... today.

“You must be Watson”, 'I said (I did _not_ growl). “Why did you attack me?”

“Me attack you?” he said hotly, rising to his feet. “You were the one creeping around the place in the pitch dark!”

“Holmes does not like bright lights”, Stamford said, with what looked dangerously like a smirk on his chiselled features. “Besides he has the most excellent night vision - as I think you just found out the hard way, John!”

Our mutual friend scowled and pulled himself to his feet. He was clearly trying to regain his dignity, and clearly failing. By a long chalk. 

“Bed!” I said firmly. “I had to go down to Abingdon late but I managed to catch a goods train from Radley.”

I slouched off to my his room and left them.

“Well”, I heard Stamford say, “you certainly made an impression. _On the floor!”_

I heard him chuckle as our visitor slouched off back to his own room.

MDCCCLXXIV

I was still tired the following morning, but there was coffee _and_ bacon out there so I bestirred myself and moved silently out of my room. Watson was sat at the table with his back to me while Stamford was placing a tray in my place, with plenty of bacon. He was I supposed a decent enough room-mate at times.

“The servants bring round the food”, Stamford said, pointedly not looking at me, “but Holmes is five miles beyond horrible if he does not have his coffee first thing. Especially after a late night.”

I scowled. That had been uncalled for, and not at all accurate. Well, not that accurate.

“Surely he cannot be that bad?” Watson said.

“Cof-fee!”

Watson leapt from his place as I surged past him to the blesséd breakfast, and he let out a high-pitched squeak (not, as he claimed in his original notes, 'a manly expression of surprise'). He was still trying to steady his breathing when I sat down and eyed the bacon with pleasure, although he winced for some reason when I drank my first coffee straight down.

“I have extra bacon, Sherlock”, Stamford smiled. 

“Ba-con!”

I fell on the plate before me, although after my first few rashers I looked up to where some visiting personage to these rooms was looking perilously close to a smirk. He visibly shuddered but I just shrugged my shoulders, downed the second coffee that a very wise Stamford had poured for me, then resumed my bacon.

“Do not forget your ketchup”, Stamford said, passing me a small bowl. 

“Good man!” I said, downing another coffee. 

“What happened to your eye?” Watson asked politely. 

Oh yes. My black eye. I had forgotten about that minor detail. 

“Lord Rushcliffe happened”, I said dryly. “He and his two cronies came off worse.”

Stamford whistled through his teeth.

“You do not want to be upsetting the Perseverance Club, Holmes”, he said warningly. 

“What is the Perseverance Club?” Watson asked wonderingly. 

“It is a club for those with more money than sense”, I said crisply, “which in this city is a far too broad definition. I have been investigating as to whether or not they were behind the recent outbreak of crime in the colleges and Lord Rushcliffe took exception to my questions.”

“He was hardly going to admit to it”, Stamford pointed out. “You are thinking that he was behind all three thefts?”

I scanned the morning newspaper and sighed heavily.

“Four”, I corrected.

“Four?” Stamford asked. 

I looked at him grimly.

“The Gloria Scott was taken overnight”, I said meaningfully.

That unsurprisingly meant little to our visitor but Stamford looked as if he had been pole-axed. Understandably, given the circumstances.

“No!” he gasped.

Watson looked between the two of us, clearly annoyed at being out of the loop.

“What is going on?” he asked. 

I turned back to him.

“That”, I said crisply, “is precisely what I am endeavouring to find out. _In between being assaulted in the dark by visitors to the vicinity!”_

He blushed fiercely, but I returned to my bacon. Priorities here!

MDCCCLXXIV

“Bargate is one of the newest colleges”, Stamford explained to Watson some time later having steadied his nerves with a large brandy (he had been deeply affected by the news as I had known he would be; the fellow hardly ever drank). “It was founded as a very small place fifty years ago and only reached its present size and status thanks to the generosity of one Mr. Solomon Beaumont-Carew who had made his fortune in shipping. He started out as a maritime pilot – the men who guide ships into and out of harbour – and still did the job occasionally even when he came to run his own fleet of ships.”

“Mr. Beaumont-Carew had had one son, David, but he had died before he came of age. That left three daughters all of whom married gentlemen their father disapproved of and this, among other things, led to a breakdown in familial relations. He had no brothers or sisters who outlived him, and although he had a plethora of nephews and nieces he disliked them all. He died some ten years ago and his will left everything he possessed to be divided between the college, which got two-thirds of the estate, and his three daughters who got one-ninth each. They would likely have contested that but a proviso in the will meant that anyone who challenged the will would have to lodge a sum that they would lose if unsuccessful, so they chose not to.”

“I see”, Watson said as I came and sat down at the table. “So who is this 'Gloria Scott' then? One of the daughters?

“No”, Stamford said. “One of the terms of the bequest was that he also left the college a scale model of the first ship he owned, a brigantine². He had it made especially with a small model of himself in the bridge; modesty was not one of his failings!”

For some reason he glanced at me as he said that. I glared warningly at him. That was not wise when I had a knife and fork to hand!

“The terms of the will were unusual”, he continued, smiling in a way that was just annoying. “The college only got the interest from the capital sum for twelve years after which they got the remaining money as a lump sum. They also had to keep the model safe and display it in the Main Hall; if it was lost or stolen then all the moneys went to charity.”

Watson frowned. The thought crossed my mind that he was not an unattractive gentleman, although he really could have done more to make the best of his appearance. I would remark on this later to Stamford; I was damnably suspicious of the coughing-fit that he had immediately after.

“But then why would this Lord Rushcliffe wish to engineer a theft of the model?” Watson asked. “Surely he does not gain from it at all?”

“Some men will do things just so someone or some organization that they dislike doesn't benefit”, Stamford said. “John, did you not tell me once that Lord Rushcliffe's brother Viscount Cropwell is married to the eldest daughter of the late Mr. Beaumont-Carew? You know, from those society-pages that you may just happen to glance at on the odd occasion or seven?”

“I _do_ read things other than the society-pages”, our visitor said testily. “And I still do not see just why this theft happened.”

“Except that it has not happened.”

They both turned to look at me as I was sitting there with my pipe. I stared back at them.

“Parkinson, the watchman, nearly caught the thief crossing the quadrangle”, I said. “The villain dropped the model and fled. It has been damaged but it is repairable.”

“So the theft failed?” Watson asked.

“Possibly”, I said. “I am still investigating the case.”

“I suppose that they took the model to Wentworth?” Stamford said.

“Who is Wentworth?” Watson asked.

“The go-to chap for cleaning and repairing such stuff”, Stamford explained. “He did a great job putting that frightful Renaissance painting to rights even if it was dog-ugly to begin with. Four women all looking like they badly needed the lavatory; I would not have given the thing house-room!”

I had to smile at that. Stamford had never had any appreciation of art.

“He has to put himself to rights first”, I said. “Thomas Wentworth was struck down in the food poisoning incident at dinner the night before last, along with around twenty other people. I talked to his brother and he will not be able to work on the model for another few days at least.”

“Coincidence?” Stamford ventured.

“Either way it has not helped the thieves”, I said. “The college has had two security-guards posted around the model until it can be taken away to be repaired. It is now far less accessible than it was before.”

“A strange case all round”, Stamford said.

“Indeed”, I said. “I am sure that we have not heard the last of this matter.”

I might have added that there would almost certainly be a further theft in a week's time, but that would have been showing off. And I never did that.

I did not!

MDCCCLXXIV

I did not see Watson much the following week as Stamford had a major essay to write and had jotted down some suggestions as to places our mutual friend might wish to see. Stamford told him that I was interested in the thefts but that I would solve matters 'in my own supremely modest way'. Which was true; I am indeed supremely modest. 

The maid service round here had become shocking of late, leaving all that dust to make poor Stamford cough like that.

MDCCCLXXIV

One day Watson was reading in one of the fireside chairs when I returned from my studies.

“Where is Stamford?” I asked, removing my jacket and tossing it into the arguably less than perfectly tidy half that was my side of the main room (the carpet was, contrary to what Stamford later claimed, still visible over there in the corner if one bent down and looked under the table).

“He is seeing one of his professors”, Watson said. “I think it is about the essay that he is writing. 

I nodded and abstractedly continued to disrobe until I was bare-chested. Neither Stamford and I were shy about such things; he was surprisingly fit given his sedentary nature and the fire in our rooms even in summer was always going. Our visitor however seemed to be having some trouble with his breathing for some reason. Strange.

MDCCCLXXIV

Watson was still behaving rather strangely half an hour later when Stamford returned. 

“They have struck again!” he said as soon as he was through the door. 

We both looked up at him.

“The naval thief?” Watson asked.

“Yes!” Stamford said. “But this time they hit the jackpot! Six gold bars recovered from a sunken Spanish galleon in Cornwall were on display at Exeter and they got the lot. Someone broke into the library in the small hours of the morning and while the watchman was chasing them off the real thieves struck at the Main Hall!”

 _“Five_ things now”, Watson mused, looking across at me. “I wonder if the great Mr. Holmes will be able to solve this case after all.”

“As I expected this sort of thing to happen, I already have solved it.”

I may have been maybe a shade too all-knowing judging from the eye-roll of a room-mate who I was beginning to have serious doubts over. Watson stared at me in shock.

“How can you know who it was?” I demanded. “For _all_ the thefts?”

“It is quite simple”, I said dryly. “Once one has eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, _must_ be the solution.”

“Anyone could do that!” he snapped. 

I could see his disbelief. I supposed that lesser mortals like him would perhaps have had difficulty when encountering such greatness.

“Really?” I said with a slight smile. “I wish to re-interview those parties involved tomorrow before presenting my findings to the College Board. You are welcome to accompany me, sir, and to see if you can reach the same conclusions that I have.”

He glared at me.

“Consider it a date!” he said hotly.

Why Stamford was spluttering as he headed off to his room, and our mutual friend had gone so red, I knew not.

MDCCCLXXIV

Our first interview the following day was with Mr. William Parkinson, the Bargate watchman. He was a grizzled old war veteran in his late fifties; I could see that Watson was surprised that he opened up to me so quickly. Mr. Parkinson showed us where the thief had got in and answered all of my questions quite readily. 

“You cannot possibly think that he was involved”, Watson said as we left. “The man has a medal for serving in the Crimea!”

_(I was referencing the Crimean War, which had concluded eighteen years back. Great Britain and France had combined to prevent Russia from securing the Crimea Peninsula in what was arguably the first 'modern' war with all the horrors that that entailed. The campaign was successful but had led to both the resurgence of France (which had alarmed Germany and led to the Franco-Prussian War) and to the decline of Russia (which ended eventually in the disastrous Bolshevik Revolution)._

“A medal does not pay the bills”, I pointed out. “You observed that he has a second job to help clear his debts?”

He stared at me in confusion.

“I do not remember him telling you that”, he said. “What debts?”

“He works on the site where they are putting up the new building for Queen's”, I said. “The building is being constructed of Chilmark stone, the dust from which is quite distinctive and was present on both his clothes and hands; it is the only such work going on around Oxford just now. There was also a tally-marker³ mostly hidden under some papers on his desk which means that he must owe someone a considerable amount. Money or the lack thereof often provides an excellent motive for crime.”

He looked dubiously at me. I did not know why as I was obviously right.

“Queen's was where the first theft happened, was it not?” he asked.

I smiled knowingly.

“Indeed!” I said. “Let us brave the insufferable Kenneth, Lord Rushcliffe and see how far we can lower your regard for the English nobility!”

MDCCCLXXIV

I felt a particular scorn for Lord Rushcliffe as my father happened to know his father, the Earl of Pengwern, and in this case the son was the bad apple that had fallen a long way from a good tree. It was fortunate that this villain was not the eldest son and that his two elder brothers both had children of their own, so he would almost certainly never inherit the title. Lord Rushcliffe was in his late thirties, blond and ruddy-faced, and made no secret of his displeasure at my return. 

“Holmes again!” he sneered. “I see that you brought a nice new lap-dog!”

“I did have one more question for you”, I said politely. “Of course if you would rather that I go straight to the College Board....”

I stopped, allowing the threat to hang in the air. He went pale.

“What is it?” he snapped.

“The runner, or the cook?”

I caught Watson's confusion at my question, but did not miss how the nobleman went even paler at my question.

“The runner”, he muttered.

“Thank you”, I smiled with an impressive amount of insincerity. “That was all I wished to know. _For now.”_

“Rot in hell!”

I gave him my most insincere bow and led the way out. Watson scuttled after me.

“What was all that about?” he asked bewilderedly.

I thought for some reason that he seemed much more attractive when he was pouting his displeasure at being left in the dark. It seemed a strange, almost random thought and I filed it away for further examination later.

“The food poisoning of an entire table is apposite to the case”, I said, striding quickly along. Then I stopped, so suddenly that Watson nearly ran into me. “Any deductions so far _Constable_ Watson?”

He pouted some more.

“I wonder why even an earl's youngest son, and for that matter someone of his age, should be at college in the first place”, he said. “He does not strike me as the studious type.”

I smiled at that. He did have some sense, apparently.

“A good observation and pertinent to the case”, I said. “Follow that thought and see where it leads. Come. We have two more calls to make.”

MDCCCLXXIV

Watson clearly felt completely out of place in the lawyer's office, and I could sense his annoyance that I was at ease here. Thankfully my father's name (or possibly the terror that Mother inspired even from some eighty miles away) had eased my way in. A spruce fellow in his late thirties called Mr. Marcus Baden was sat opposite us leafing through a number of legal papers.

“You are aware”, he said, rather pompously for someone of his age”, that I am unable to divulge the precise details of the late Mr. Solomon Beaumont-Carew's estate? Even if some parts of the will are now common knowledge.”

I nodded his assent, wondering why someone of his youth drank so much (the decanter poorly concealed behind a potted plant). Possibly the affair that he was conducting with the secretary that we had passed on the way in, as he had two different shades of lip-stick one on his collar and the other his cheek, and the second of those had been the exact shade that she had been wearing. She had also simpered at me for some reason, which Watson had rolled his eyes at.

“That is not the reason for my call”, I said. “I know that you were the person who drew up the last will and testament of Mr. Solomon Beaumont-Carew. What I wished to ascertain was knowledge of a certain financial aspect appertaining to it.”

I handed over a piece of paper to the lawyer who unfolded it and read it. Then he almost jumped out of his comfortable chair.

“How did you know?” he demanded, staring at me as if I was some kind of wizard. 

I smiled pleasantly.

“I merely deduced”, I said. “From your reaction it appears that I deduced quite correctly. Thank you for agreeing to see us, sir. We will take up no more of your valuable time.”

I ushered my friend out, earning myself another simper from that secretary. Once outside he turned to glare at me.

“So the theft was to deprive the college of the bequest after all?” he asked.

“The _attempted_ theft was aimed at achieving but one thing, and it totally succeeded in that aim”, I said. I looked at his watch. “We must hurry. Our last call goes to dinner in thirty-five minutes.”

He pouted some more when he realized that I was not going to tell him any more.

MDCCCLXXIV

The offices of Mr. Thomas Wentworth. His younger brother Mr. Joseph Wentworth, like him a nondescript gentleman in his mid-forties.

“Do you have any more questions for us, Mr. Holmes?” he asked politely.

“Just the one, thank you”, I said. “Did they bring the model over earlier this evening?”

“Yes, sir”, he said. “Joe thinks that he will be well enough to start work on it the day after tomorrow. We have locked it away in our most secure cupboard; it was too big for the safe.”

“Good”, I said. “Tonight I wish for you to leave it out in plain sight, in the main room.”

He turned deathly pale.

“Surely you do not think....” he began.

“I do not _think_ sir”, I said firmly. “I prefer to _know_. I appreciate that your brother is not fully recovered but it is imperative that the two of you spend the night elsewhere. I believe you have a third brother Walter, who lives in the city. You must stay with him and not return until after sun-up tomorrow.”

“Very good, sir.”

“I shall see you at four o' clock tomorrow afternoon”, I said firmly. “Be sure that you are ready.”

“I will, sir.”

I hustled Watson out of the room before he could say anything.

“What on earth is going on?” he asked.

“There is going to be a lot of fuss tomorrow”, I said, perhaps a tad brusquely. “I shall speak with the College Board at around three o' clock. I would like to talk to you about the case afterwards, say around five o' clock in our room. Would that be acceptable?”

“Oh”, he said. “Yes. Acceptable. Yes.”

“Good.”

“You know who did it?” he asked.

“Of course”, I said. “That is the easy part. Ensuring justice for those involved however..... I fear that that may prove somewhat more difficult.”

MDCCCLXXIV

Many times in my long and glittering career people would chide Watson for always being a cynic. I however had even in my short life-span thus far acquired an understanding of just how society functioned or, in this instance, was likely to malfunction. So before putting myself before the College Board, I took certain precautions.

It would have been nice to have been proven wrong in this instance, but that was always going to be unlikely. Especially as the Board would think that I would not place my own education on the line merely because of the sort of principles that, as I did indeed find out, were clearly alien to them.

After the Board meeting which took but a few minutes I went over to the gymnasium and spent a very pleasant half-hour shredding two punch-bags in my frustration. I was done here.

I returned to our rooms and packed my remaining items (I had sorted my room out that morning but locked my door to prevent either Stamford or Watson from discovering my plans). I had thought to get away from this hell-hole and write my explanations to the pair of them from the safety of London, but Watson returned earlier than expected and caught me, staring in astonishment at all the bags.

“You are leaving?” he gasped.

“I must”, I said. “The Board has left me with no option.”

“But why?” he asked, clearly shocked. “You are halfway through your degree. You cannot give up now!”

“I have no choice”, I said. “This morning the four missing naval items were all found in Mr. Thomas Wentworth's quarters. He and his brother have been instructed to leave the college by nightfall or face prosecution for theft.”

“So they _were_ guilty!” he exclaimed. 

I looked at him pityingly and shook my head before checking my pocket-watch. 

“I have about ten minutes before my cab is due”, I said. “I suppose that I can use that to explain the case to you.”

He sat down eagerly.

“I am all ears!” he said. 

Physically he was not, but I suppose that that was just some strange expression.

“The whole case revolves around the will of the late Mr. Solomon Beaumont-Carew”, I began. “Once I knew that Lord Rushcliffe's brother was married to the man's eldest daughter, I suspected his involvement in this ramp.”

“But how?” he asked.

“Mr. Baden confirmed my suspicion that upon disposal, the estate of the late Mr. Beaumont-Carew was considerably smaller than had been anticipated by his heirs”, I explained. “At the time this was considered due to what I now believe to be a false paper trail of supposedly poor investments. It is my belief that the man disliked his family sufficiently to convert the better part of his estate into a form which could elude their grasp. Mr. Baden confirmed for me that over the months before his death his client had made several trips to London. It is my belief that he used those trips to buy diamonds.”

“Why diamonds?” he asked, puzzled.

“He wished to remove a lot of money out of the house in a small space”, I said. “A small space as in part of a model of an old sailing ship....”

“The 'Gloria Scott'!” he exclaimed. 

I smiled at his boyish enthusiasm. 

“Indeed”, I said. “I believe that he must have sent a communication to the dean of the college alerting him to the true value of his strange bequest. I think that because it chanced that the dean was taken ill on the very same day that Mr. Beaumont-Carew died, and himself passed on three days later. Hence the 'gift' went undetected.”

“And all that time the diamonds were virtually on open display!” he gasped. “Anyone could have taken them!”

I nodded.

“Somehow Mr. Beaumont-Carew's daughters must have become aware of the subterfuge”, I went on. “Most probably a servant talked, or offered to talk for money. Lord Rushcliffe therefore applied here, hardly a first choice for such a noble family let alone for someone so clearly unsuitable to college life, as you said. He was planning to stay for as long as it would take to retrieve the diamonds, and it was he who engineered the spate of thefts of which the model was just one.”

“Where would one hide a leaf but in a forest”, he muttered.

“Exactly.”

“But how did you know all this?” he demanded.

“Deduction mostly”, I said. “After all there were several clues.”

“Such as?” I asked.

“For one, the fact that an agile young thief whom you may remember we had been told could successfully crest an eight-foot wall, dropped the model and fled when confronted by an aged and unarmed watchman”, I said. “Lord Rushcliffe guessed that the diamonds had to have been hidden _inside_ the model, and indeed removing the roof of the ship's bridge allows one to access the figure of the pilot, the late Mr. Beaumont-Carew, which when pressed back releases a secret compartment lock. Lord Rushcliffe planned to remove the diamonds, allow the empty model to be sent to the Wentworths for repair, carry out a fifth robbery then plant the other stolen items on the brothers for the authorities to 'find'. That was why I made sure that the Wentworths were elsewhere when the 'set-up' occurred; I did not want to risk them getting hurt, as they may well have been given the sort of people that I was dealing with here.”

“Evil!” he shuddered. “And that bastard has got away with it.”

To his surprise I shook his head.

“Not at all”, I smiled dourly. “Lord Rushcliffe is doubtless feeling very pleased with himself just now, but he has severely underestimated the late Mr. Solomon Beaumont-Carew. As he will realize when he tries to sell them, the diamonds in the ship's hold are all imitation ones.”

He stared at me.

“But how could you know that?” he asked.

“Because unlike that prancing peer I assumed a much greater degree of intelligence from his foe”, he said. “Mr. Beaumont-Carew foresaw what you yourself said might happen, that someone might find the jewels by sheer chance, so he placed some excellent imitations in the obvious place. Very good quality ones; I had to test them before even I was sure. Once the fake gems are removed however one can access two small panels inside which conceal two switches. Pressing them both at the same time opens the compartment in the base in which the real diamonds were hidden.”

“So _you_ have the real gems?” he asked. 

I shook my head. 

“I was going to restore them to the college to whom they were originally intended”, I said, “but after the shameful way in which the Board chose to treat the Wentworths, I had a change of heart. I came here via their rooms where I gave them a small souvenir of the place that has treated them so appallingly. Their new lives in the United States will be that much more comfortable now.”

“But why did the Board not expel Lord Rushcliffe?” he asked, confused. 

I sighed. He really was an innocent in this world.

“They know that he is guilty, but he is the son of a leading member of the House of Lords”, I said. “The Wentworths on the other hand are 'expendable'.”

He shuddered at that word.

“It is all about justice”, I said softly. “I do try to follow the law but first I follow what is _right_.” I heard something outside and nodded to him. “That is my cab. I do hope that we shall meet again some day.”

He recovered enough to mutter a 'Godspeed', promising also to inform Stamford of the reasons for my departure. I looked at him for a moment as I stood in the doorway, then formally shook his hand before heading out to my cab. My first time with Watson had been brought to a sudden end.

For some reason I felt oddly alone.

MDCCCLXXIV

Joseph and Thomas Wentworth did indeed emigrate to the New World, America first before moving on to Canada. They were later joined by their brother Walter and his family, and they established an honoured name as philanthropists over there. Mother was Livid (a Level Seven) over my having been forced to leave and I believe that Father may have been instrumental in the troubles that subsequently befell Bargate (apparently the Board members were crooks as well as being unprincipled), which achieved a dubious distinction when it was first stripped of its university status and was eventually forced to close less than a decade after the events herein described.

MDCCCLXXIV

_Notes:_  
_1) As of 2021 The National Hospital For Neurology and Neurosurgery._  
_2) The definition of this ship type has since changed, but then it was a two-masted ship whose second mast was taller than the first, and which had a fully-rigged bowsprit (the long forward-pointing mast at the front of a ship) for greater manoeuvrability._  
_3) An archaic method of recording a debt. A wooden tally-stick would have marks or cuts made along its length and then split on two, half each going to the lender and debtor. It was therefore impossible for either to change the amount involved. These were almost obsolete back then; the burning of a whole load of the things had been responsible for the fire that had destroyed the old Houses of Parliament in 1834._

MDCCCLXXIV


	2. All's Fair In Love And War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> November 1874. Lieutenant Carlyon Holmes is going for his first promotion, to the rank of captain – but something is amiss. With the young soldier also stressed by his beloved wife's fifth pregnancy (the dog!), can Sherlock ensure fair play for his brother when it comes to men with guns?

I suppose that it might feasibly be possible to have a conversation with my mother that does not leave me traumatized. Just like it might feasibly be possible to swim the wide Atlantic Ocean. But this most recent one had gone from terrifying to even more terrifying in an instant.

As I said, Mother was determined to make Bargate pay for what they had done to me and, while I was prepared to accept that (like I had any choice!) I did ask Father that he make sure my and Watson's friend Stamford was not harmed in the process. Father also pulled a few strings to get me transferred to the same course but up at Tarleton College in Cambridge, and with all my work credited there. 

What left me more worried that I had ever been in my short life was when Mother insisted that I would feel better if she read me some of her dreadful stories, but just as she was getting into one about the hockey team caught in a demonic whirlwind ('Supernatural'), I decided to distract her by telling her about meeting Watson at Bargate. For one horrible moment I was sure that I had made the biggest mistake of my life; she came over with that glazed expression as if she had just seen a field of gambolling lambs (what Carl called her 'hearts and flowers' look; he admitted that it even terrified a soldier like him!). Then she patted the top of my head and smiled in a way that utterly terrified me. 

And then she left me! 

_What the blazes had just happened?_

MDCCCLXXIV

Tarleton was a very different college from Bargate, although I found that I liked it and settled in quickly. They were certainly efficient; I had to do only one short test in order to complete my transfer process and most of the tutors were very helpful. I particularly took to Inglis Atkinson, a fellow from London who was only a few years my senior and who I was fortunate enough to have had allocated as my Home Tutor (i.e. someone I could go to who was not involved in my course work). This was useful as I did have am initial problem with one lecturer who was virulently anti-Irish and who had found out about my family background. Fortunately Inglis ensured that he then found out just who my mother was, and his attitude miraculously improved overnight!

The college lay to the south-west of the town and was based in Tarleton Old Hall, whose owners had abandoned it for the New Hall after a major fire some time in the past. The accommodation was in the Old Hall itself which was excellent as it meant that each student got an individual if tiny room; to use a colloquialism one could have given a cat a head-ache against each of the four walls had one attempted to swing it around one's head for whatever reason one swings cats these days. The old stable-block had been converted into some quite impressive modern class-rooms, and about the only thing to be said against the place (the odd bigoted tutor apart) was that the nearby town was if anything even snootier than their rivals down in Oxford. Still, all in all it was very pleasant and I considered myself lucky to have fallen on my feet like this.

There was one small incident during my first few weeks there which did not, initially at least, reflect well on Cambridge as a whole or at least on its colleges. That summer Mr. Disraeli's government had passed a Factory Act, ending the frankly disgusting practice of employing children as chimney-sweeps and limiting workers to a fifty-six-hour-week. However the colleges tried to make play of some archaic law that exempted them from this long overdue development, only for the government to warn them that it was quite prepared to pass a second law mandating that they come into line. 

I might also take this opportunity to mention that the great universities stood in high esteem around this time, and indeed at the last set of electoral reforms in 'Sixty-Seven there had been a move by some politicians to counter the trend towards more votes for the lower orders by granting extra votes to university graduates. This had not come to pass¹ as such but dual-member constituencies had been established for each of the two great universities, while there was also a London University member. Dublin University had returned two members ever since the Act of Union at the start of the century, while up in Scotland Edinburgh and St. Andrews Universities shared a single-member seat as did the institutions at Glasgow and Aberdeen. I did not like the idea personally; I felt that each adult should have a vote and that was that. Once one started messing with that basic system we would end up with each party picking whatever rules they thought would get them an electorate that would support them.

MDCCCLXXIV

Because I had started later than anyone else I decided not to go home at the break which occurred in the Michaelmas (Autumn) term. I was already caught up with the work but I felt a compulsion to at least match my performance at Oxford and complete three years' work in two. However as the end of November approached I was sufficiently ahead in all my work such that I did consider a brief trip home. Which was useful, for I received a telegram from Moira saying that there was a family matter that required my help but that I might be able to sort it over a long weekend 'if I got my finger out'. Quite why waving a digit in the air would be of any use I knew not, but made arrangements with the college and left on Thursday the twenty-sixth.

My sister was waiting for me on the platform at Liverpool Street Station, which surprised me somewhat. Perhaps this matter of hers was really urgent after all.

“It is Carl and Anne”, my sister said as she hustled me off the platform and into a cab. The ticket-collector had made to stop her but one look from my sister and he had very wisely remembered a pressing engagement elsewhere. The last official to try to stop her had discovered that she was not shy as to just where she stuck her umbrella! 

“Not the baby?” I asked, surprised. “It is not due until the middle of next month. Unless you are telling me that she has had it already, it is a fifth son, and Hilton has died of jealousy.”

“I would have just sent you an invitation to the 'Hurrah, he has gone!' Party”, she quipped. “Carl went in for his final interview about his promotion to captain on Tuesday, and he is sure that it went badly.”

I looked at her suspiciously.

“I do not believe for a minute that the British Army could find someone better than Carl to scare the living daylights out of its men”, I said. “But what do you think that I could do about it?”

“I need to contact someone who knows everything that there is to know about the Army”, she said. “But I ran into Carl at the house and he made me promise not to interfere in any way.”

“Which you are doing now”, I pointed out.

“No I am not”, she said stoutly. “I am getting you to interfere for me. That is _quite_ different.”

There were many times when I was grateful that my sister had not decided to go into politics, and this was one of them!

MDCCCLXXIV

I have mentioned my brother Carl only thus far as Mark's twin, physically very similar to him but of a strikingly different character. I should say that both were righteous men but had different ways of achieving their ends; subtlety from Mark (except when he was describing certain horizontal activities with Kai to me, the villain) and directly from Carl to whom subtlety was a closed book.

Because nothing is really secret in a family, I knew that there had been some concerns when Carl had met and decided to marry Anne Spencer-Churchill. Not because she was from an illustrious family – the leading families of England had not survived for as long as they had done without knowing better than to oppose anything that Mother had set her heart on – but that I suspected Carl was like Mark in, well, that horizontal area. But he was a man of the sternest moral rectitude and he clearly loved Anne, as well as the fact that by this time they had had four sons (Edward, Charles, Spencer and Peter) while Hilton, a year Mark's senior, had had three daughters. Not that Carl ever made a point of remarking on that fact.

I mused that those pigs were flying rather low over such a a built-up area!

MDCCCLXXIV

The following day I was dispatched to visit General Vespasian Marchwood-Banks, a retired soldier who lived in a large house up in Finchley. He was, Moira said, about sixty years old and 'a character', which remark made me wonder if I should be taking my gun. My sister had also warned me not to jump to conclusions which had seemed a strange thing to have said, but then that was her all over. And she was still bigger than me, worse luck!

Moira had told me quite a bit about the general and his family, so when I entered the place I paid particular attention to the huge picture hanging on the wall opposite the main door, a scowling army figure who was very clearly Disapproving of my presence in his house. I had also noted that rather than a servant I had been greeted and was indeed shown in by a lieutenant of about thirty years of age, who introduced himself as one Torold Sharp. He stared at me suspiciously as I sat down, the one a solid, grey-haired old gentleman and the other a slim if not pencil-like tall fellow. They could not have been more different and yet.....

“What do you want, sir?” the lieutenant asked frostily.

The general looked up at him and the young man blushed.

“I am here about my brother, Lieutenant Carlyon Holmes”, I said. “He had an interview for promotion to captain on Tuesday and was of the opinion that it had not gone well. Given his excellent standing and high abilities, my sister and I wondered why. His wife is due to give birth soon so he is rather preoccupied, I am afraid.”

The general looked at me thoughtfully, then nodded.

“He was not chosen for the promotion”, he said slowly. “But there was no chance that he would have been.”

“May I ask why?” I said.

“He was up for promotion against three other men”, the general said. “Two of them were absolute no-hopers, which is why they were put forward. The third on the other hand had already been promised the post, as General Hillier who was on the interview panel has privately acknowledged him as his bastard son.”

“Surely that is against the rules?” I ventured.

The old general smiled.

“They do say that all is fair in love and war”, he said. “The lieutenant's name is Roger Fforbes. Your sister might do well to investigate him, in my opinion.”

I thought that this soldier could likely tell me everything that there was to know about this Lieutenant Fforbes, but decided not to push my luck.

“Sir, it is time for your rest”, the lieutenant said gently.

The general nodded, then rose slowly to his feet. Apparently our interview was at an end.

MDCCCLXXIV

I returned to Moira and she quickly set the wheels in motion. As ever the right servants talked for the right amount of money, and I soon had the information that I required. And rather more on another, related matter.

I also had a rare (although not rare enough) encounter with my elder brother Hilton during a brief visit to the family home in Guilford Street, so as I mentioned him in relation to Carl I suppose that I had better take this opportunity to introduce the pest. My parents' second son and fourth child, he was eight years older than me and a deeply unpleasant fellow who, as Moira so rightly said, looked like a funeral director on a bad day (she really is far too catty, even though she was right on this). Hilton had married a cousin from a branch of the family that had fallen on hard times, and I knew that he resented bitterly that Rachael had 'only' provided him with three daughters (the fact that he was openly unfaithful towards her did not, in his opinion, justify her utterly, loathing and detesting him). There was also the fact that Father had been offered a full knighthood, in other words a title that could be inherited by his eldest son, but had declined it. Since barring another Immaculate Conception I was sure that Mycroft would never marry that might have given Hilton a chance of becoming Sir Hilton, which he would have greatly enjoyed. He and I did not get on at all.

I could have no idea back then just what consequences would one day arise from my poor relationship with my second eldest brother. Had I done.... well, Moira knew one or two 'interesting people', and one more body in the Thames would not have made that much difference, surely?

MDCCCLXXIV

I did not expect my reception at 'Cole House' to be warm one, and it was not. General Charles Hillier was a bluff old soldier in his late fifties, with a scowl that could have removed paint. He had clearly guessed from my card just why I was there and I was in truth surprised that he had agreed to see me. Presumably he was afraid that I knew something about his disreputable actions.

I did. But not what he thought.

“If you are here to try to get me to think again about your brother's promotion, forget it!” he said shortly.

“In a way I am here for that”, I said. “However I am more concerned with the events some thirty or so years ago in Trinidad.”

He looked at me in confusion.

“I have never been to that island”, he said suspiciously.

“I know”, I said. “At the time in question you were stationed in Trichinopoly in southern India, opposite the island of Ceylon. Almost the exact opposite side of the world, as it happens. And like so many of our men who carry the flag to the four corners of the world, you succumbed to the charms of a young lady one time.”

He glared at me.

“That is not against the law, sir”, he said stiffly.

“But fraud and misrepresentation are”, I said. “A few years back you were approached by Lieutenant Roger Fforbes who claimed to be your natural son, born as a result of the aforementioned liaison.”

“Roger is my son”, he said shortly. “And what is with all this Trinidad business?”

I fixed him with a look.

“The lieutenant was actually born in Trinidad, not Trichinopoly”, I said. “The lieutenant came to England and joined the Army, looking for someone who might have had the sort of liaison that you did. He then obtained a forged birth-certificate and approached you, claiming to have been your natural son.”

“How can you know this?” he demanded.

“My sister sometimes employs a gentleman who works in the trade”, I said. “He himself did not provide the false birth-certificate – he has strong morals when it comes to such things – but he knows the two other men who do similar work. He is prepared that, if you wish it, he can come to your house and explain just why the document is a fake; I know that the lieutenant left it with you.”

He stared at me. I wondered for a moment if he was going to deny what I had said, but then he nodded.

“How soon can he get here?”

MDCCCLXXIV

A few days later I was at my brother Carl's house when the news came through. He was now Captain Carlyon Holmes of Her Britannic Majesty's Army. Not that that was his immediate priority as Anne had gone and annoyed Hilton even more by giving birth to another son.

“We were going to call him Winston, which is one of the family names in Anne's brood”, Carl said, “but her cousin Randolph had her first yesterday and she chose it. Winston Spencer-Churchill seems a bit of a mouthful but there you go. So we chose Adam, because Anne likes it.

“Five sons now”, Moira said dryly. “It seems that Anne is not the only one round here who likes it!”

Carl went bright red.

MDCCCLXXIV

I left Carl's house glad to see him happy, but instead of returning to Queen Square I diverted to a small, nondescript house in suburban Clerkenwell. The door opened to reveal a familiar figure, who looked most alarmed to see me.

“May I come in?” I asked politely.

Lieutenant Sharp nodded and stood aside to admit me. This was most definitely not the sort of place that someone of his social standing should have been living in, but then I knew the reason behind that.

“Your wife is out?” I asked.

He nodded again, clearly understanding now.

“She took the boys to visit the general for the day”, he said quietly. “You know.”

“I know”, I said. 

“He did wonder”, the lieutenant said. “That was why he helped you; he values his privacy these days though he loves it when Cassius and Cicero go round.”

“My sister did some research before sending me to him”, I said, “and that rather overbearing portrait in the hallway of his house confirmed it. You are not, as so many think, his 'personal attendant'. You are blood.”

He nodded.

“His nephew, his brother Brutus's only son”, he said, clearly resigned to tell me all. 

“I do have one question”, I said. “Why the subterfuge? Come to that, why do you and your family live here?”

“The old man's father, General Pompey, is still alive”, he sighed. “He holds all the family moneys and could ruin his son if he was so minded. The funny thing is, he thinks like everyone else that as you say I am his son's 'personal attendant' as is fine with that, but if he knew that I was his actual grandson and what his elder son had done to beget me, our only hope would be that the shock might kill him!”

“So you live quietly here raising the next generation while waiting for him to die”, I said.

“It is not a noble thing”, he admitted, “but it is the only way.”

I had to admit that he was right about that.

MDCCCLXXIV

Thankfully neither General Vespasian Marchwood-Banks nor his 'not a personal attendant' Lieutenant Sharp were to be put under this strain for much longer, as General Pompey died just over a year later at the start of 'Seventy-Seven. General Vespasian sold his barn of a house and purchased two adjoining and much better properties, a small one for himself and a larger one for his nephew and what turned out to be a family of eight, four sons of which – Cassius, Cicero, Augustus and Vespasian Junior – all followed their illustrious father into the Army.

Ironically as I make these notes (1936) Anne's nephew is again in the headlines. Mr. Winston Churchill was a supporter of the departed and frankly unlamented King Edward The Eighth, but he has made his name in recent times for his strident and, it has to be said, probably accurate warnings about the increasingly aggressive stance of Herr Hitler's Germany. Who knows – he may even end up as prime minister one day!

MDCCCLXXIV

_Notes:_   
_1) These would continue largely unchanged except that the two Scottish seats would be replaced by a three-member constituency for all Scottish universities in 1918. All university seats would be abolished in 1950._

MDCCCLXXIV


	3. Second-Class Murder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> February 1875. When a group of railway-workers start work on a rake of coaches, they find something rather unpleasant in one of the compartments – a dead body! Sherlock uses his mid-term break to investigate, in between striving to avoid family traumas from more than the usual source.

This strange little case came at a particularly trying time for me. Not because I was having problems with my studies; indeed I was as I had fully expected to be on course to complete the three years of study I had had planned for Tarleton in just two, such was my natural brilliance. No. In the week-long term break I had to encounter several traumatic events culminating in my having to solve a murder on the railways. And I had so been looking forward to a nice rest in my quiet Queen Square rooms, albeit with one eye on the path in from Guilford Street in case Mother decided on a surprise visit.

Ah well.

MDCCCLXXV

I had left Tarleton on Saturday the thirteenth and was actually in a good mood, having just received another letter from Watson. It was all good news; his studies at St. Bartholomew's were proceeding well (although of course not as well as mine) and he had heard from Stamford that there had been no repercussions from the events last year. It was I felt quite uncalled for of him to remark that had there been, the fellow could always play those Northumbrian bagpipes of his that, the one time I had heard then, had sounded like a set of cats being all neutered at one and the same time! My friend also sounded off about St. Valentine's Day which I knew was tomorrow, and which he loathed for the increasing commercialism around it. I quite agreed, and jotted down some notes for when I was home and could write back.

Unfortunately my time in London did not go well. The following day I very generously if foolishly made the decision to call round on my brother Logan who..... seriously, pyjamas and a dressing-gown at one in the afternoon? He was terrible!

He was also, very oddly, alone.

“Where is Ajax?” I asked, surprised. “He is normally joined to you at the hip.”

“The dog is making the bed”, he grumbled, easing himself very slowly onto chair for reasons I very pointedly did not want to think about. “A tidiness fetish is one of his little quirks; come to that it is the only little thing about him!”

I glared at him, but was distracted when the subject of our conversation entered the room and..... ye Gods, he was wearing a set of underpants with red hearts all over them. A very skimpy set of underpants; little wonder that my brother was.... and now I was thinking about That! Ugh!

Ajax loped over to where my cousin was sitting and somehow inserted himself underneath him, making poor Logan cry out as he was manoeuvred into position.

“St. Valentine's Day”, my brother sighed. “Like he needs a reason to wear something like that!”

“Not the only one wearing them!” Ajax muttered.

My soon to be ex-brother went bright red! I had terrible relatives!

MDCCCLXXV

I was still trying to get that image out of my head some time later, which probably explained why I called in at the family house in Guilford Street (the temporary one; our old one was still being rebuilt after The Goldfish Incident) without first checking to see if Mother had any unfinished stories to hand. Unhappily she did, so I had to stay and hear 'Leathernecks', a short story about how a platoon of American Marines were captured during a raid on the African coast and used as sex-slaves by an Amazon tribe for five years before being found and released. Whereon they all went straight back to the tribe and carried on carrying on!

How the blazes had I turned out as such a brilliant, well-balanced and supremely modest fellow, given my upbringing?

MDCCCLXXV

Thankfully I had written and posted my letter to Watson that morning (i.e. while I had still been sane) so at least that was done, and I could now look forward to some peace and quiet. At least so I had thought, but instead I was to be drawn into a murder not far from my home which was strange indeed, and which I was not able to solve. Or rather I was but there were..... issues.

In my dealings with them I had rapidly come to the conclusion that the quality of the Metropolitan Police Service's officers who served the capital was, to be frank, variable. Among the best were two friends of mine, LeStrade who I have already introduced and Gregson, who would bring me this case. Tobias Gregson was as has been said a fifth son of William, third Baron Gregson, a minor and insufferably pompous Middlesex lord, and I knew that his father in particular had been annoyed at his choice of career (likely because Gregson's mother had won a huge settlement from him in the courts over her divorce, during which all sorts of unsavoury things about her former husband had come out). The baron, who had died the previous year, had of course disinherited young Tobias so it was a double punishment that his wife had used the moneys she had won to put the boy into Hendon (the police training college). It had been a shrewd move; the young man was as determined as LeStrade when it came to getting his own way.

Interestingly I had also noted that both gentleman always seemed to call on me in Queen Square when Mrs. Leadbetter was having one of her baking-days and there was cake to be had. Although I felt Moira's suggestion that she might get some of her newspaper friends to print that they were bringing in a two hundred per cent levy on cakes was somewhat cruel. 

Well, cruel-ish.

Tall, thin and noble in appearance if not name, there was something of the patrician about Gregson but he had a sharp mind and would likely go far if he managed to avoid annoying the wrong people (although with him that was a rather big 'if'; his only other similarity to his rival was that neither had attained or ever looked likely to come anywhere close to attaining Level Zero in subtlety!). He was blond and always toying with his hair, partly I suspected because his rival had started to go bald a few years back which was why he had shaved his head. The two clashed at every opportunity and even at a few that were not opportunities; frankly they were terrible! The Metropolitan Police Service had clearly had its guardian angel looking out for them when they had come up for promotion a couple of years back but even so I had had to step in to make sure that they had both gone up at the same time. I therefore dreaded when the first vacancy for inspector that they could apply for came up, but thankfully that would not be for at least a decade; I would surely be famous enough to be able to secure a case somewhere in the vicinity of Timbuctoo around that time!

There was only one good thing about the sorry Gregson-LeStrade _imbroglio_ , and that was that their former inspector had decided to move to France for some reason. Not maybe for France as Inspector Baldwin had been a most unpleasant fellow and, I knew, had deliberately stirred the already tense relationship between his two sergeants presumably in an effort to drive them to try to outdo each other. His replacement however was cut from a very different cloth; the huge Alexander MacDonald down from Cumberland and some seven years younger than my friends. Promotion nearly a decade ahead of his time had seemed a recipe for disaster even given that he had family in the service, but in his few months in charge it had become clear that he hated all Mankind equally. For some strange reason this worked, and about the only thing that my two friends agreed on was their respect for (fear of) their new superior.

Some years later I would mention that fact to Watson and, being him, he would snark that there was a second thing my friends agreed on – the fastest route to our lodgings on our current landlady's baking days. It said a lot for my greatness of mind that I able to tolerate him on days like that, no matter how right he may or may not have been (very).

MDCCCLXXV

Gregson sighed as he sat down, and I immediately worried as even the inevitable slice of cake did not seem to lift his mood. This had to be serious!

“It is this murder at St. Pancras Station, sir”, he sighed. “They found the body this morning and already the pressure is on us to conjure up a murderer from somewhere.”

“Are they certain that it was murder?” I asked. 

He nodded.

“They were refitting the last of their coaches for this big change of theirs”, he said. “The workmen were ripping out the old seating and fitting new, and found the fellow at about eight this morning.”

I should explain at this point that this 'big change' was to prove quite important as regards railways and the people who used them. Prior to this time the many small railway companies had largely discouraged third-class travel by making it as uncomfortable and inconvenient as possible; an attempt by parliament to force them to run what became known as Parliamentary Trains at set fares and speeds had of course failed because they had disobligingly run said trains at times when no-one could use them. Some companies had even openly admitted that they kept third-class in such a dreadful state because they feared that to improve it would cause those using second-class to 'drop down'. Hence fifty years on from the first railways, they were mostly used only by the upper- and middle-classes.

However this had changed last year when the Midland Railway, which back in 'Sixty-Eight had established its own route into London that terminated at St. Pancras Station not that far from my home, had come up with a most shocking idea. They had condensed their second- and third-class coaches into 'Improved Thirds', ostensibly abolishing second-class and creating what the newspapers called 'Second-And-A-Halfth-Class'. The change had started to be introduced over the latter months of the previous year and had proven very popular, certainly to the chagrin of the Midland's rivals who were now being compelled to follow suit and let the Great Unwashed onto their trains after all. This refitting must have therefore been among the very last of the coaches to be treated.

I looked curiously at Gregson.

“This is not the normal sort of thing that brings you to my door”, I said, very generously not remarking that the cake (already gone) would likely have done that anyway. “There is something else in this matter. What is it?”

He ran his fingers through his hair.

“I interviewed the men who found the body”, he said. “Mostly the usual sort of thing but I had the impression that one of them, a fellow called Nobby Ray, knew something. He lived not far from the victim as well. I do not think that he would open up to me if I pressed him further, but he might to you, sir.”

“I see”, I said. “Do you have his address?”

MDCCCLXXV

Rather than go straight round to Mr. Ray's house in St. Pancras I first called on Moira, and asked her to find out certain information for me. Fortunately I had at least some idea of what needed to be uncovered, and Gregson had been right in that the railwayman had had something to hide.

I then went round to Gregson's station and asked him a question.

“Yes, he was shot like that”, he said, looking at me in surprise. “How did you know, sir?”

“Because someone has talked”, I said. “And the newspapers have fixed upon the obvious.”

He sighed heavily.

“The bullet right between the eyes”, he said. “An assassination-style shooting, so clearly the victim Mr. Cresswell had upset someone Important. May I see the police-doctor who examined him?” 

Gregson nodded and took me into one of the interview rooms. I was soon joined by a think middle-aged fellow with dark hair, who looked at me suspiciously.

“Doctor Montague Drake”, he said coolly. “You wished to see me, sir?”

“You told the newspapers.”

He baulked at my omniscience (I have always liked that word), and looked suddenly wary.

“What do you mean, sir?” he asked.

“I would wager that if I were to secure the body of the late Mr. Oliver Cresswell, I would find not one but two bullets inside it. The very obvious shot to the forehead which the railwaymen spotted – to which I shall shortly come to – and the second shot to the side of the head. By 'second' I actually mean 'first', since that was the shot that killed him.”

He stared at me in silence, then slowly nodded.

“Mr. Holmes”, he said carefully, “you know as well as I do how society views suicide these days. It would be the ruination of this fellow's family if it came out.”

He was right in that. In something which would affect more than one later case, the laws on suicide regarded it as a crime and, since obviously the victim could not be published, there was a major social stigma against their families in such cases.

“Did you speak to anyone else?” I asked.

“Mr. Gregson had the men in for questioning, and he got Nobby sent down to formally identify the body.”

“Why not the dead man's wife?” I wondered.

“Probably because Mrs. Cresswell was busy under some other fellow!” the doctor said sourly. “Nobby broke down when I confronted him with what I had found, and told me everything. His friend had been driven to take his own life by his shrew of a wife and he had found the body with the gun next to it. Luckily he was alone at the time; he was checking out the coaches before work started so he fired a second shot like an assassin would have done.”

I instinctively felt for Mr. Ray. Finding his friend like that would have been bad enough, but forcing himself to shoot even a dead man between the eyes.... it must have taken a considerable amount of courage.

“Why was the wife behaving like that?” I asked.

“Not just her foul nature”, the doctor said. “The victim had a trust fund from a rich uncle, and she would qualify for a share in it in the event of his death. Which she caused as surely as if she had shot him herself.”

“Yet you covered up another shooting”, I sighed. “This is a mess!”

“You cannot come out with this”, he said urgently.

“I will not expose what you did”, I said, “but that still leaves a bitterly unhappy Mr. Ray, an unavenged dead Mr. Cresswell, and a Mrs. Cresswell who cannot be allowed to profit from her actions. I will have to think long and hard about this.”

MDCCCLXXV

Fortunately I did not have to think long and hard after all, as Moira had an instant solution when I told her what had happened.

“Mrs. Kyndley.”

I looked at her expectantly. 

“What about her?” I asked. “For that matter, who is she?”

“One of the best assassins in London”, she said.

Ah. I knew that my sister knew one or more people in what she euphemistically called 'the direct removal business', but even so, that one of the was a lady? Then again I supposed that this lady's victims would have thought much the same, right up to the moment when they realized that they had just made their last ever erroneous assumption.

“Looks like an English nanny but deadly at any range”, Moira said. “We will get her to contact this Mrs. Cresswell and invite her to quit the country. Or face the Consequences.”

I had a good idea of what those Consequences might be, and rather hoped that Mrs. Cresswell would fail to take the hint.

MDCCCLXXV

Happily for everyone except her, Mrs. Cresswell failed to take the hint. I may or may not have treated myself to a celebration barley-sugar.

I was also able to use Father's influence to make sure that the late Mr. Cresswell's funds went to the people that he had wished (his excuse for a wife had of course destroyed his written orders but luckily the lawyers in charge of his fund had insisted that they be lodged with them as well). Half the moneys was split between two cousins of his both of whom were very poor and would greatly welcome such a windfall. The other half passed, much to his astonishment, to Mr. Ray, who I had round to assure him that the mysterious death of his friend would certainly be put down to one of those Mafia-style killings. I know that he named his next son after his friend and apart from clearing his own few debts put virtually all his bequest aside for when the boy came of age. 

Moira told me that I was wrong when I claimed not to have found the killer of Mr. Cresswell, as I had indeed brought justice down on his terrible wife. I suppose that she was right, although there was no need for her to be so..... her! Now not only was she bigger than me but she knew an assassin! 

Life, like her, was just _annoying_ at times!

MDCCCLXXV


	4. Deck The Halls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> April 1875. Sherlock would undertake many strange cases in his time, but seriously, a spat over deck-chairs? A timely holiday in west Norfolk ensures that the young consulting-detective can bring justice down on the guilty faster than.... well, a collapsing deck-chair!

It was April and I had a problem. I would normally have been planning for my return to my rooms in Queen Square, but Moira had warned me that Mother was working on some three-volume horror that was due to be finished that month, which meant that one or more of her offspring would be expected to read it. She had been to see a new opera recently called 'Trial By Jury' by a new partnership between Mr. William Gilbert and Mr. Arthur Sullivan, whose works would light up Late Victorian Society, so Lord only knows how that had inspired her (as if she needed any inspiring!). Unfortunately she knew full well that my progress in my course-work had been excellent and that I was on course to complete my studies by the summer of the following year some two years ahead of schedule (no thanks to a certain Oxford college, I might add), so I could hardly plead that I needed to stay on over the Easter break. 

I approached Inglis Atkinson to see if he had any ideas, and fortunately he did. Even better, he had had in some more of that excellent coffee that he liked, although I did not visit him so often solely because of that.

Not _solely_ because of that. He also had some rather delicious bacon-flavoured snacks.

“You might be able to help out a fellow student of yours rather than face whatever horror your mother has come up with”, he said, smiling as I may or may not have grabbed a large handful of said snacks. “It concerns young Andrew Hall. Do you know him at all?”

He smirked quite unwontedly as he asked that, which was most annoying of him. Had there not been good coffee (and smacks) in the vicinity I may well have left in a huff, but instead I graciously condescended to overlook his knowing full well that I did not interact with other students. I had no interest in them and they had none in me. Also that as Tarleton was the smallest of all the Cambridge college, most students would have known each other had they not been as focussed on their studies as I was.

“Should I?” I asked.

He smirked some more, the bastard. I grabbed some more snacks.

“He is the tall, blond fellow who looks like a toilet-brush.”

That was arguably not a kind description, but as it helped me remember the fellow it was perhaps accurate. Mr. Hall was one of those who was very obviously here on some sort of scholarship as his clothes were of markedly inferior quality to those of other students, and did indeed look like a..... like that. And before the reader says it, yes – his hair was worse than mine!

“I suppose that some students cannot do much with their hair”, Inglis said with a smile, looking at my perhaps a tad less than tidy thatch (I had _tried_ to comb it that morning but somehow it always reverted to standard mess by my own door-way). “He is a good fellow, but we may be about to lose him.”

“How so?” I asked.

“As I am sure you worked out from his appearance, he is here on a scholarship”, he said. “It funds three-quarters of his fees and his parents cover the rest. But they have run into some sort of problem and have said they will likely have to withdraw him at Easter. That is a shame, as he is a good fellow.”

 _By which he meant a better and kinder man than those whom life had endowed with so much more_ , I heard him not add. In other words someone that it would be a pleasure to help.

“I thought that you might go and see if there was anything that you might do to help his parents”, he said. “They live in Hunstanton right up in north-west Norfolk, so very sadly you would not have time to go to London during the holidays. But I am sure that you would get over that.”

He really was terrible. I had no idea why we got on so well. Apart from the coffee. And the bacon snacks.

It had to be my generous and self-effacing nature, I supposed.

MDCCCLXXV

Mr. Andrew Hall was more than a little surprised when I said that I wished to take and interest in his family problems. Unfortunately he knew little as to exactly what those problems were save that his father has been financially impaired and that he would have to quit the college as a result. I had not initially felt any great interest in this matter but the sneering reactions of some of our co-students when they learned of the fellow's imminent departure riled me considerably, and I determined to do what I could for the fellow. All that he was able to tell me was that his father ran a business providing deck-chairs to holidaymakers on the town beach, and that that he had been having some sort of problems of late but had not told him what. Not very helpful.

I sent a telegram to Moira asking her to find out what she could about the matter and in the meantime made what inquiries I could into East Anglian affairs. Oddly enough the small town of Hunstanton had been in the news only the previous week; a villain who lived there had carried out a jewellery theft down in King's Lynn but had fled to his home-town only to be caught and put in gaol. He was awaiting trial but unfortunately his partner in crime had managed to thus far evade detection, along with the jewels that they had stolen. It did not seem much, but perhaps there was a connection to Andrew's deck-chair difficulties. 

_Perhaps Mother's stories had done their worst and I was finally losing my mind._

MDCCCLXXV

I was hard put not to smile when Andrew introduced me to his father, who was a perfect mirror image of him but just two decades further on in life, and still with 'toilet-brush' hair. He at least was able to explain exactly what difficulties he was now encountering.

“The local council wants to license all us chair-men”, he said. “But they've said it's first come first served, and the ones they've sold licenses to so far have been given all the best stretches of beach including mine, starting Easter weekend. The best I could get if I signed up now would be a stretch in the old town which would never make me a living.”

(Andrew later explained to me that this meant Old Hunstanton; New Hunstanton, where we were now, having become dominant largely because of the railway's arrival. Obviously people would not usually walk an extra mile or more for the same sand and sea, unless the place was really crowded).

“Your son mentioned other problems as well”, I said. “Can you elaborate?”

He just looked confused.

“He means explain, dad”, Andrew offered helpfully.

“Oh”, his father said. “Someone broke into the place the other week. Didn't take anything, though unless he was desperate for a lot of deck-chairs and had a cart to take them away, I don't see what he hoped to take.”

I had a sudden idea.

“I read about the capture of a thief in the town recently”, I said. “Did your unwelcome visitor come before or after that?”

“The same day, sir”, he said. “Why? Is it important?”

“I do not know yet”, I said, somewhat evasively. “When did the council decide on this new system of licenses?”

“Two days after my place was broken into”, he said.

“And are the whole council behind this, or just one man?” I asked.

Andrew sniffed disdainfully.

“Mr. Splat!”

I looked at him in surprise. His father shook his head at him.

“He means Councillor Arthur Platt, sir”, he said. “It was all over the town last month; he took one of my deck-chairs out on the beach and it broke under his weight. I suppose that's why he got mad and came up with this thing of his.”

That seemed very suspicious. March was not really a deck-chair month, and..... yes, I could begin to see it now.

MDCCCLXXV

If I was right in my surmise then there was no time to lose. I wired back to Moira as a matter of urgency, having told Andrew and his father that I fully expected there to be some sort of further move against their business and that one of them or at least a guard of some sort should be with the chairs at all times. Fortunately my sister was able to dispatch someone to my aid who, once I had told the Halls that I would stand a watch for them was able to find what I had been expecting.

Now I had to bait the trap, so I found a local journalist and told them that an expert in the location of stolen jewels was due to arrive in the town the very next day. A few coins in the right pockets meant that the article appeared most prominently and also that a copy was delivered to one particular person who I wished to be informed.

MDCCCLXXV

The local police-station had, rather grudgingly, loaned me one Constable Philip Hay, a keen young tyro who was like Andrew was all limbs and untidy hair but was prepared for a good night's work, especially after I insisted on providing him with a good supper. Although he started to look anxious when he saw my gun.

“Not that I think we will need it, constable”, I said reassuringly. “I do not expect our visitor to be armed, but better safe than sorry.”

He still looked nervous but nodded, and we settled in on our vigil.

MDCCCLXXV

Thankfully it was not to be a long one. Barely fifteen minutes after Andrew's father had gone off, I heard the sound of someone working on the padlock outside. The constable nodded at me; we were positioned either side of the doorway which was the only way in or out of this place.

After a while the lock gave and a large figure entered, definitely a man. He hesitated before moving over to where the deck-chairs were nearly stacked, and began to feel his way along each row. Andrew's father had explained to me that a small number of them had thin holes drilled in the two back supports so that Union Jacks or whatever other flags the people wanted could be placed in them. I knew however that this fellow was after something rather more than a piece of cloth.

Being a considerate fellow I allowed our visitor enough time to go through all the chairs, smiling as his increasing exasperation was ever more evident. I could see the constable opposite and nodded to him; we moved slowly forward to block the exit, then the constable suddenly pushed open the door, allowing the light of the still nearly full moon to flood in.

“Greetings, Councillor.”

My voice sounded almost alarmingly loud in the silence of the shed. I could see the huge fellow calculating his odds of being able to bowl us both over and try to make his escape, followed almost instantly by the slump of his shoulders when he saw my gun.

_We had him!_

MDCCCLXXV

After only a little consideration the town council decided that the new licensing system was frankly unworkable' only an uncharitable person might have remarked that with local elections fast approaching they did not wish any journalists to start inquiring what other shady things their elected representatives had gotten up to (which they were going to do anyway, unbeknownst to them). Andrew's father was secure again and his son could continue at Tarleton.

“It was something that you said which gave me a clue, sir”, I told the elder Mr. Hall. “You mentioned that, much to their annoyance, Mr. Platt was always round the police-station complaining about something or other. That made me wonder so I checked, and he was there when the thief Mr. Charles Beech was brought in.”

“I still find it hard to believe that he talked to a thief, sir”, Mr. Hall said.

“Even unpleasant men like Mr. Platt talk to their own families, sir”, I said. “Mr. Beech is the son of his sister Mary; ostensibly the two sides of the family have cut off all communication with each other but once I suspected the truth, it was easy to find that uncle and nephew had communicated frequently. That you were dragged into matters was not something they had planned for, which was why they tried to ruin you.”

“But why would he have hidden the jewels in our place?” Andrew asked.

“That was not his intention”, I said. “One of the letters between them included the plan to hide the jewels; they were to be secreted inside deck-chairs in the second of the four sheds here, which is owned by Mr. Platt himself although he rents it out to one of your rivals. However, when he came to hide the jewels, Mr. Beech thought that he was supposed to use the second shed along from the eastern side where his uncle's house was, in other words your shed. You may imagine Mr. Platt's horror when he let himself into his shed and found nothing.”

“Then he went and saw his nephew who put him right?” Mr. Hall asked.

“Indeed”, I said. “He was doubtless prepared to wait for the fuss to die down, which was why I placed that article about a jewellery detection expert coming to the town this week. That meant he had only tonight to try to recover his haul, instead of which he walked his way into a gaol cell.”

“All those jewels”, Mr. Hall sighed. “We were rich without even knowing it.”

I smiled knowingly. I had had to have Father have a few Words with the right people so that they had, with some prodding, done the right thing, but all in all this case had worked out very well.

“You still are”, I said. “The jewellers offered a reward of one hundred pounds¹ for the return of their property, and I have notified them that as you were custodians of it however unwittingly, it should be paid to you.”

They both looked at me in astonishment. I could understand their reaction; what with the scholarship that would mean that Andrew could use that money to complete his course and not rely on his father. They were not exactly set for life but they were a lot better off than they could ever have hoped to be, especially given their situation when I had come to this place.

MDCCCLXXV

“I would wager that you got a lot more satisfaction our of helping someone like Andrew than many here”, Inglis said at our first meeting back.

“I had a lot more satisfaction when I heard that Randall had been caught trying to slip out of the house before reading 'Iron Man'”, I said as I grabbed another handful of the delicious snacks. “A story about a metal humanoid with interchangeable parts.”

“That actually does not sound so bad”, he smiled.

I just looked at him.

“This is my mother we are talking here?” I prompted him.

He suddenly went pale. Yes, he had worked out just which 'parts' were interchangeable! Which was only fair; a trouble shared is also someone else's problem too, or however that saying goes.

MDCCCLXXV

_Notes:_   
_1) At least £9,500 ($11,500) at 2021 prices._

MDCCCLXXV


	5. Love Thy Neighbour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> September 1875. Sherlock makes his first ever trip to the rural Bourne Valley in eastern Wiltshire, a place that will be important to him one day. An unexpected legacy related to his most painful early memory prompts the detective to assist a man in need even if the detective is distracted by a forthcoming event, and nearly results in what might in the circumstances have been a somewhat difficult meeting.

I had a rather sad letter from Watson that summer. I had hoped to meet up with him but he had had to rush off to Cornwall where the German steamship 'Schiller' had run aground off the infamous Scilly Isles (which would one day not far into the future become infamous to me, coincidentally in a way related to this my next adventure). Over three hundred and thirty of her passengers and crew, nearly ninety per cent of the total, were lost, and the local medical services were swamped. Sorting mostly dead bodies was I was sure a dispiriting task but someone had to do it, and it spoke volumes for my friend's character that in the midst of his studies he had put himself forward for such a task.

MDCCCLXXV

My next case was my first brush, albeit a tangential one, with a family who would play a greater role in my life than even I with my great wisdom and supreme intelligence could have foreseen. I have mentioned before how, shortly before my birth, my father faced ruin only for two business associates, Watson's maternal grandfather Mr. Mark Campbell and a friend of our own family Sheridan, Lord Hawke, to step in and rescue him. It was the nobleman whose family I was about to encounter.

One of my earliest memories was from 'Sixty-One, the year the terrible American Civil War started and when I was but seven years old. I was a curious child even then, although with my family it was perhaps noticed less than it otherwise might have been. I was sitting at the kitchen table – there was strawberry blancmange, I recall for some reason – when Carl, then fourteen, brought a friend home. His name which unsurprisingly stuck in my memory was Macareus Whitesmith, and he was some five years my brother's senior. Carl explained that he had some sort of relationship with the Hawke family who we knew in some way but I paid little attention, until Mr. Whitesmith's friend came to collect him. Sheridan, Lord Hawke's son and heir, Lord Tobias. 

I also recall my mother being 'off' in some way (i.e. more than usual, which was why I noted it). I had never met Lord Sheridan although I had heard that he had something of a reputation for being a ladies' man (I would only later come to appreciate just how true that was). Lord Tobias though – it was not just that he was nobility; he was... beautiful. I had never given much thought to what I wanted to be when I grew up, but this was a walking breathing example of perfection that I so wanted to become.”

Sadly I could not know that I would never see him again. He had, I found out soon afterwards, been due to marry one Miss Alice Olney the following winter. She however had an old flame that she preferred, and had arranged for that villain to spirit her away on her way to the church. Poor Lord Tobias never recovered from the shock and blew his brains out a few short months later. The title passed to his half-brother Lord Theobald, but as he was then only two years of age his brother-in-law Mr. Henry Buckingham, the husband of his half-sister Mary, stepped in and ran things for him. Ostensibly Lord Sheridan resumed the title that he had yielded to his elder son two years back but it was Mr. Buckingham who did all the work. 

Hilton, being Hilton, tried to tell me the story in a way to make poor Lord Tobias look guilty, but Moira found out and thumped him (I did sort of think about asking her not to, but somehow I never quite got round to uttering any actual words). She told me the whole thing despite my young age and I always remember one thing that she said at the time; that some families seem marked out for ill-fortune. That it should have been someone as bright and beautiful as Lord Tobias Hawke who lost his life – it had seemed terribly wrong to a small boy.

MDCCCLXXV

I have to bring this up now because I was about to receive a painful, and yet incredibly welcome, reminder of that sad day. I returned to Queen Square one day to find that a gentleman had called and left his card, saying that he would take a walk and return at about three. Fortunately it was nearly that already so I took the card and looked at it. Then I winced.

'Captain Macareus Whitesmith'.

The fellow who had been the reason for Lord Tobias coming to our house and my seeing him. Father had since explained that the Whitesmiths were a family who lived in Collingbourne Kingston, the Wiltshire village just north of which lay Brunton Hall, ancestral home of the Hawke family. The two families had always had links although there had never been any marriages between them (or at least none in the direct line of succession; I seem to recall that minor family members had married the one time). The Whitesmiths were also a military family; each generation had at least two serving or past members of the armed forces.

The captain arrived a few minutes before three and I bade him sit down. He was then about thirty-two years of age, an athletic-looking red-headed gentleman who was most definitely military. He was carrying a small box which I wondered about, but I held my curiosity in and waited to discover the purpose of his visit. Although I did observe rather too many lines on his face which made me wonder just what had made him so worried.

“I am afraid that I must begin by raising a matter which may be painful to you, sir”, he said. “It concerns a young man taken from us before his time, who you met when you were but a boy.”

“Lord Tobias Hawke”, I said. “A grievous loss to Mankind.”

I did not imagine it. The most fractional of pauses, but it was definitely there. He was going to lie to me, or at least withhold something from me. But what? He seemed honest enough but then so did many men, good and bad.

“Indeed”, he said (I silently thanked Moira for those lessons on spotting a lie; I had picked up two other signals as well). “I believe that while he was in your house, you admired his new hat and pipe.”

I smiled at the memory.

“It seemed a wonderful hat for a seven-year-old”, I said, “besides the idea that one would wear something so ridiculous-looking to go and hunt a deer. And I always thought a pipe manly even though I would never dare smoke because Mother.....”

I came to a halt. Belatedly I had got it. He nodded and handed over the box.

“I was with Toby just before.... the end”, he said awkwardly. “He wanted you to have those things, the hat and pipe. He said that you were the future and.....”

“And he was not” I said gently, wincing at his words. “I understand. You could hardly watch him twenty-four hours a day on the off-chance that you might be able to stop him. A man's life is his own at the end of the day, to do with what he will.”

“He wrote me a letter”, the captain said, “absolving me of all responsibility. But I still got it in the neck from old Lord Sheridan for not keeping his son safe.”

“That was wrong of him”, I said reprovingly.

“He had just lost his son and in the worst possible way”, the captain said, shrugging his shoulders dismissively. “To be fair His Lordship did apologize when he got the letter that his son left him.”

I looked shrewdly at my visitor.

“You had a second reason for coming today”, I said. “Not that I am not incredibly grateful to have these and will treasure them always, but you yourself have a problem. Is it to do with Lord Sheridan?”

“Not directly, sir”, he said. “As I said he does not like me, but he very much sits in his big house and vegetates or cogitates or whatever it is that he does. No, it is the gossip going round the village. They say that my nephew Dante is His Lordship's son rather than my brother Deion's.”

“Is he?” I asked, thinking that from what I had already learned about Mankind such a thing was rather more likely than many had wished.

“I have no idea, sir”, he said. “But you see, my brother and his eldest son, Dean, are gingers like me while Dante is dark-haired like His Lordship. And Dante is only nine but, well, he is not the same sort of character as the rest of us Whitesmiths. Those sort of things make people talk.”

“It is a rural village in Wiltshire, Captain”, I said. “I doubt that it requires much if any motivation to get people to talk.”

“Very true, sir”, he admitted. “But you see, Deion is.... well, he is different from me.”

I stared at him expectantly, wondering just in what way his unseen elder brother was 'different'. An extra limb, perhaps?

“He is the sort who would disown the boy if he was ever sure”, my visitor said. “Maybe even if he was fairly sure. I would see the boy right if that happened, but this gossip – what you might call 'the not knowing' – is damaging us all.”

I thought that it reflected well on my visitor that his prime concern was for his nephew and not himself, as the British Army was from what Carl had told me even worse for gossip than the average village, so my visitor's own prospects might well be blighted by rumour in painted tongues. Unless, perhaps rumour found another target.

“This is an extremely difficult problem”, I admitted. “As we both know, people will gossip. Have you any other family apart from your brother and his sons?”

Again there was the most fractional of hesitations. There was definitely something that he was not telling me. Possibly more than one thing.

“None left”, he said. “I was one of seven but only three of us made it to adulthood, and poor Alcyone died when she was twenty.”

 _Possibly mortification at having parents who had read too many Greek plays_ , I thought dryly. But then at least that was better than parents who named most of their offspring for places where they had..... no, I so did not want to think about That!

It was suddenly rather cold in this room.

MDCCCLXXV

Thankfully there was a small cafeteria nearby which did all-day breakfasts, and that evening I needed my bacon. They knew me well enough to have a whole plateful of rashers, which was wonderful considering that I did not go to the place that often.

Look, I only got a _small_ discount!

MDCCCLXXV

Reluctantly given the treasures that he had brought me, I felt that I still had to have Moira check out Captain Macareus Whitesmith's family. She told me that he had spoken the truth about them as far as she could ascertain, and that young Dante Whitesmith was likely another of Lord Sheridan's offspring which made him the late Lord Tobias's half-brother. For now, unless I was able to stop people talking.

It was however Moira who offered a way forward (thankfully she made up for being an annoying and larger bigger sister in some ways, at least). She had identified one of the Whitesmiths' neighbours, a Mrs. Roberta Scotland who worked up at Brunton Hall, as the source of the rumours (it was I suppose rather creepy that her being based over eighty miles away had not stopped her finding that out) and had suggested that..... well, I was shocked!

All right, it was Moira. Of course I was not shocked!

MDCCCLXXV

Captain Whitesmith had some Army business in London to take care of, so I travelled down to Wiltshire alone. The railways had not yet reached the Bourne Valley although they would quite soon, so I alighted from the train at Salisbury and hired a carriage. I drove past Stonehenge which was drawing a large crowd of people who presumably found a lot of old stones in a field fascinating for some reason (although I knew that Watson with his strong interest in history would like that sort of thing). Then it was on through a small village called Ludgershall and across some very empty downland before I entered the valley itself. It was charming in a pastoral sort of way, and I supposed that it would appeal to some. Quite possibly Watson, his being a country fellow himself.

I was actually feeling very happy this day because I had received some most wonderful news from my friend. He would be in Cambridge for two weeks next month so I would be able to see him after all, and hopefully pluck up the courage to approach him about taking a room together when his course ended next year. As part of a work-experience scheme he had been allocated to work at the Medical Centre which served all the Cambridge colleges, but he would surely have some time for me. 

I was therefore smiling as I came into Collingbourne Kingston and sought out the cottage of Mrs. Scotland. She was I knew not at work just then, so would be able to receive me, Which she did.

_Simpering! Ugh!_

Mrs. Scotland was a large lady who, to coin a phrase from the time, had not only let herself go but had also given herself a push along the way. She had clearly once been attractive but she had reached her thirties looking careworn and with a face that could likely have removed furniture varnish. I did not beat about the bush; her husband was I knew wont to come back at irregular hours because of his part-time work as a farm-hand, and I wanted to speak to her alone. Frankly I wanted to return to my carriage and race back to Salisbury, but business first.

“I am here about the rumours you have been spreading concerning your neighbours, the Whitesmiths”, I began.

She smiled serenely, and batted her eyelashes at me. Ugh again!

“I have no idea what you are talking about, sir”, she said sweetly.

“You may deny it if you wish”, I said, “but it stops as of now.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because of your father's eyes.”

It may have seemed a nonsensical thing to say but, as I had known it would, it brought about a complete change in her manner. The simpering vanished to be replaced by an angry glare, and I thought more than a little reassuringly of the gun in my pocket.

“What do you mean?” she tried.

“You told your husband that your late father had green eyes”, I said, “and that that explained the green eyes of your own three children. But he actually had blue eyes, and the only way that they could have green eyes would be if either a parent or grandparent had green eyes as well. Since we can rule out all four grandparents, their real father must be the green-eyed source. Such a colour is rare; indeed I can only name one gentleman round here who has them. Albeit a rather prominent one.”

“You can't tell him!” she insisted.

“Unless these rumours about my friends the Whitesmiths cease as of now, I will”, I said. “You see, madam, gossip is easy to start but very difficult to stop – _unless one provides people with some ever juicier gossip with which to distract them!”_

She scowled at me, but she knew that I had won. Hah!

MDCCCLXXV

A week later I received a letter from Captain Whitesmith, informing me that all the gossip around his family had suddenly and mysteriously ceased. He thanked me greatly for my efforts, which I appreciated.

I also visited a local hatter and a tobacconist in the intervening week, and ordered a number of copies of the late Lord Tobias's things to be made for my everyday use. The originals were too precious to risk out in public – I could not have coped with losing my last, small links with him - but the pipe and deer-stalker would become my trademark as they should have been his. I would do what I could to become the man he should have been.

MDCCCLXXV

I was actually rather closer to achieving that ambition that I knew.

MDCCCLXXV


	6. The Tarleton Tragedy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> September 1875. Sherlock meets John again, and the consulting-detective proves that what looks like murder-suicide is in fact a diabolical double murder, one in which witnesses have lied without even knowing it.

I had returned from Wiltshire in good spirits and then moved on quickly to resume my studies at Cambridge, and not just because I knew that Mother was working on some new horror that was surely due to appear any day now.

My studies _were_ important!

The only downside of Watson's visit was that it would overlap the latter part of my end-of-year examinations, but I was confident that I had those covered and was determined to make the most of his time here. My plans were nearly wrecked at the start when he announced that St. Bartholomew's was angling for a visit from Captain Matthew Webb, the fellow who for some strange and inexplicable reason had decided to swim across the English Channel (although I supposed that at least it was an Englishman; if it had been a Frenchman we would never have heard the last of it knowing that nation!). Fortunately the gallant captain managed to fit the hospital in on the day before my friend's departure, and he was able to leave London as planned.

I managed to meet my friend at the railway-station – he looked rather tired, I thought, but then he was in a strenuous profession or soon would be – and settled him in before having to reluctantly return to my examinations. We had arranged to spend some time together that Saturday but once again the Fates seemed to be conspiring against us as he had to cancel, his having volunteered to stay on duty as one of the Centre's doctors was getting married shortly and that fellow and his friends wanted to travel down to London for the wedding preparations. He was so good to do something like that especially for people that he barely knew, and it frustrated me even more than we could not meet on the Sunday as my parents were coming up for a day-visit and I liked him enough not to risk subjecting him to another of Mother's stories. Earlier in the year I had sent him 'Tree's Company', the short one on the satyr who fell in love with all the trees in a forest becoming convinced that he could 'make more satyrs out of them', and my friend's writing when he had eventually replied had been noticeably shaky!

Since I could not have my friend I offered to help out again at the local police-station again. Sergeant James Huntington was despite his young age (he was only a few years older than me) a cut above the average policeman and he appreciated another pair of hands. It was while I was with him that we had a call to go out to Tarleton Hall itself, where there had been a shooting. I worried about that in itself as the more logical way to describe a crime would be as what it had been – murder, manslaughter, _et cetera_ – rather than such a general term, and when we arrived I found that I had as ever been right. It was potentially one of the trickiest crimes for any policeman to investigate.

A possible suicide.

MDCCCLXXV

The Tarleton family had once owned much of the land around this quarter of the fenland city, but now they held just the hall and its immediate estate, my college having been founded some years back when a particularly large area of land had been sold off to the original institution which wished to expand. (I should add that they had not experienced misfortune or anything like that; they had merely decided to get out of land as quite a few people were doing around that time). We were was greeted by the butler who hustled us upstairs with more speed than decorum. At the end of the corridor a heavy oaken door hung on a single hinge clearly having been broken down, and it creaked ominously as I entered the room behind it.

I found myself in what was clearly a gentleman's sitting-room of some sort. The first thing that I noticed was a small one-legged table lying on its side behind the door, presumably having been knocked over when the room had been broken in to. Perhaps more importantly, there were also two dead people (I would likely have noticed them first had I not nearly fallen over the table as, being a round one, it had rolled into the path of anyone entering the room). The gentleman had been about thirty years of age, sallow-skinned with light fair hair and an unfortunate nose. He was wearing a dressing-gown over pyjamas, both of high quality. The lady had been younger, probably in her early twenties. She had light brown hair that flowed over her shoulders and was wearing a powder-blue dress, again of high quality. The most surprising thing about her was the look of sheer hatred that had disfigured her face in death, and which chilled even me somewhat. 

There were other doors, some French ones leading out presumably onto a balcony and a small side-door which, I supposed, led into the bedroom of the male victim assuming that this room was his. Both those doors were shut. The other strange thing about the room which hit me very quickly was the smell of lavender; I had noted the purple candle lying on the floor by the table which may have accounted for it, but to me the room smelled too much to have been accounted for by one solitary candle.

The sergeant took preliminary statements from the gentlemen who had heard the shooting as well as from the maid who had been serving them when the gunshots had rung out, while I arranged for one of the spare rooms to be set up for the main interviews. I also took a lamp and checked outside the scene of the crime, but although there was a balcony it had seemingly not been used to access the room, and the muddy ground beneath it would surely have shown any recent footprints. Nor was it near any other balcony. I sighed unhappily; this looked very bad.

On a whim I wandered around the corner of the building to look at the situation there. This was more hopeful; there were still no footprints in the soft grass but four of the five windows had small balconies that were fairly close together, including the room next to the scene of the crime. I thought for a moment then went back to the sergeant, who had clearly reached the obvious if unpleasant conclusion that most people would have done.

“I am very much afraid that it looks like a murder-suicide, sir”, he said dolefully as we stood again in the sitting-room. “No-one was seen entering or leaving the scene of the crime except the victims; they were all agreed on that.

“Perhaps not”, I said. “One must remember that we could encounter two types of lies here, sergeant; what a real killer might say to cover up their crime, and what people may say when they lie without meaning to.”

He looked at me in confusion but his musings were interrupted by the sound of someone hurrying down the corridor towards us. I looked at him in surprise.

“They sent for a doctor as well”, he explained.

I did not even have time to wonder. Watson came through the door, and looked at me in astonishment.

MDCCCLXXV

My friend was a little dishevelled in his haste to get here, but radiating that solid re-assurance that was needed just now. He looked at me for some time then managed something approaching a smile. 

_Their eyes met across a pair of dead bodies_. Ye Gods, Mother must never get to hear of this or she would definitely try to write a story about it. Worse, I would be expected to read it!

“Mr. Holmes is a student who has been helping us at the station”, Sergeant Huntington explained to Watson as my friend examined both the victims. “He has an interest in crime so I thought that his presence might be valuable.”

My friend nodded and glanced at the clock on the table. It was almost ten o' clock. 

“They have both been dead for not less than an hour and not more than two”, he said confidently. “Unfortunately the presence of the fire makes it harder to give a narrower estimation as it has helped to slow the natural cooling process. I would say approaching an hour and a half is most likely, but I would have to allow at least twenty minutes either side of that.”

The sergeant looked relieved.

“That fits very well sir”, he said looking down at his notepad. “The gentlemen downstairs heard the shots just after the clock chimed a quarter to nine.”

“The cause of death is painfully obvious”, my friend said. “Both were shot in the head and they must both have died almost immediately. However the gentleman was shot at some distance and somewhat from the side, while the lady was shot at close range and head-on. From the position of her body it seems that she may have risen from her chair and then fallen back into it.”

The sergeant looked away for some reason. I winced; sooner rather than later my friend was going to put two and two together.

“The gentlemen downstairs all agreed that the room was not entered before the shots except by the two people here, sir”, the sergeant said slowly. “The gentlemen rushed up when they heard them and there is no other exit from the room.”

Watson gestured towards the side-door behind the lady's corpse.

“What about that?” he asked.

“It only leads to the connecting bedroom, sir”, the sergeant said. “There is no way out from that except back into the outside corridor.”

“This room has a balcony too”, Watson pointed out. “Could not the murderer have escaped that way?”

“The door was locked and there was no sign of forced entry”, I said. “Besides it has been raining for the past two hours yet there are no footprints in the soft ground, nor is the balcony of this room near any others. I did check.”

By his crestfallen expression I knew that he had got there. Almost the worst possible outcome. And yet, maybe not the right one.

“We are just about to take full witness statements from the gentlemen who were here at the time”, the sergeant said, frowning. “This is very bad. Miss Bessborough was a lovely lady; I do not know what could have possessed her to do such a thing.”

“Are you sure that she did, sergeant?” I asked. 

He looked at me, puzzled.

“The facts do seem to point that way, sir”, he said.

“Doctor Watson and I know each other from a prior meeting at Oxford”, I said. “If you would not mind sergeant, the two of us would like to sit in on your interviews. I think that we should start with Doctor Arrowsmith.”

“Why him, sir?” the sergeant asked curiously.

“Because the badge he wears on his lapel indicates he is of the temperance movement”, I explained, “and since he will have eschewed alcohol while here, his recollection of events is likely to the the clearest.”

“Oh”, the sergeant said. “Yes, sir. As you wish.”

He led the way out of the room and Watson was about to follow when I caught at his sleeve. 

“I am glad that it was you who came”, I said quietly. 

He blushed fiercely for some reason.

MDCCCLXXV

I could not help notice as we waited for the servant to bring Doctor Arrowsmith just how nervous the sergeant looked. But then this was a case concerning the great and the good, many of whom had the potential to be neither great nor good if they were displeased with the outcome of an investigation. Often to the ruination of a man's career. It was wrong but it was the way of the world, and likely always would be.

“It seems”, he said, “that Miss Bessborough shot Mr. Holder then turned the gun on herself. When I briefly questioned the gentlemen downstairs they all agreed that there were only two shots.”

“The shot that killed Miss Bessborough does not strike you as at all odd?” I asked. 

The sergeant looked puzzled.

“Odd in what way sir?” he asked.

“Sergeant”, I said, “the bullet was almost perfectly front and centre to the lady's forehead. Surely someone committing suicide would point the gun to the _side_ of their head? Staring down the barrel of a gun seems an unnecessary strain.”

I could see from the sergeant's expression that he had not thought of that but further discussion was curtailed by the arrival of our first witness. Doctor Robert Arrowsmith was about fifty years of age, grey-haired and as I had surmised his recollection of the events of the tragic evening was indeed precise.

“The four of us sat down to dinner at six”, he recalled, “and it lasted for just over an hour. “I remember dessert being cleared away as the dining-room clock struck seven, and we left the room a few minutes later. We all went to the main room downstairs except for Philip, Mary's brother. He was ill and went to his room for a lie-down, and was there the whole evening. Poor fellow, he must be devastated.”

“Where is his room, sir?” the sergeant asked. 

“Four doors along from Ebenezer's – Mr. Holder's – but the corridor between is open on one sides and clearly visible from the main room downstairs”, the doctor said, looking hard at the sergeant. “If he had gone to the room he would have been seen by at least one of us.”

“Not if you were distracted”, I challenged. 

He looked offended at such a suggestion.

“I was sat facing the opposite way”, he said, “but James and Geoffrey were both looking straight across the corridor. If Philip had come out of his room, they would definitely have seen him!”

He was clearly not to be moved on that point. The sergeant changed tack.

“Did you see anyone go into the room between seven and nine?” he pressed. 

The doctor thought for a moment.

“I went up almost immediately – it must have been about ten past seven – to take Ebenezer some pills”, he recalled. “Do not look like that sergeant; it was for a mild nervous complaint, nothing that would have any bearing on the case. I dare say that they are still in the room somewhere or perhaps in the small medicine-cabinet that he keeps in his bath-room. You are perfectly at liberty to have them tested if you so wish.”

“Is that why he had the candle?” Watson asked. 

“No, I believe that that was a present from Miss Bessborough”, the witness said. “They were all but engaged to be married, you know.”

Clearly the sergeant had not known that. The furrow on his brow deepened.

“James” (he meant Mr. Tarleton, the house-owner) “went up to take him a drink at shortly after half-past seven”, Doctor Arrowsmith recalled. “Ebenezer had a fancy for strange cocktail mixes and he was skilled at getting them just right. When he came down he told us that Ebenezer had asked that Geoffrey – March, the family lawyer – go up after eight to discuss a legal matter with him. He went up just after the main clock had finished chiming the hour and he was there for about twenty minutes, maybe a little longer. He was definitely back down before the half-hour; I am sure about that as I remember talking to him when the clock struck. Mary arrived home at exactly twenty minutes to nine – I looked at the clock as she came in as I had thought she was late – and she went straight up to the room after bidding us good evening. I was clearing the table as we had just sent for more drinks so I was facing that way at the time and saw her reach the door and enter. It must have been only seconds after she entered that I heard her cry out and there were two gun-shots. We made it there as quickly as we could but we were too late.”

“How long do you think it took you to reach the scene of the crime?” the sergeant asked. 

The doctor thought for a moment.

“We were some distance from the staircase to start with”, he said. “And then we found the door locked so had to break it down. James and I went back to the alcove by the top of the stairs and found the old wooden bench there so we used that. I would say that it took us not much more than a minute and a half to break through, two at the most. Geoffrey tried the door to the next room but it was locked; that was Ebenezer's bedroom and he always valued his privacy.”

Sergeant Huntington had remarked to me on that, which was another reason that I thought he would go far in the Police Service (which he did). It seemed illogical for a lady who was supposedly set on committing murder and suicide to lock a door that would serve no real purpose. 

The sergeant caught up with his notes before asking another question.

“You said that Mr. Philip Bessborough was in his room at the time”, he said. “Why did he not reach the door first?”

“I believe he was in the water closet adjoining his room, sir. It is what the French call an _en suite.”_

“May I ask a question, sergeant?” I ventured.

“Of course, sir”, he said.

“When you yourself entered the room, did you notice any particular smell?”

The doctor frowned.

“Only that damn candle that reeks the place out!” he snorted. 

“It was not lit?” I asked.

“It lay on the floor and I nearly tripped over it”, Doctor Arrowsmith said. “We entered the room somewhat precipitously you understand, and the table it was presumably on was knocked over in the confusion. It must have been alight when we entered – the stench alone told me that! – but our minds were on rather more important matters at the time, as you might imagine.”

“And you are sure that no-one entered the room apart from the people you stated?” the sergeant pressed.

“You must ask James and Geoffrey if they saw anything”, the doctor said. “I was mostly facing away as I told you. May I be excused?”

“We would only ask that you wait until everyone involved with the case has been interviewed”, I said with a smile. “Matters may arise from the recollections of other people and I am sure that you would not want a policeman calling at your surgery when you are receiving patients. Particularly as this story will be all over the town by tomorrow.”

He scowled at me, but nodded and left.

MDCCCLXXV

Our next visitor was Mr. Philip Bessborough, brother to the female victim. He was in his mid-twenties, a small man with a puzzled frown on his face as if he could not quite believe the night's events. Watson was clearly surprised when I whispered something to the sergeant then left before the witness had sat down. I had a sneaking suspicion what he would say anyway, and needed to ask Doctor Arrowsmith a further question as well as making one or two other arrangements.

The doctor was not pleased when I ran him down in the library, presumably thinking that as the sergeant was not there he did not need to bother with the likes of me.

“I would point out, sir”, I said, “that the courts take a dim view of perjury these days. Even when it is done unwittingly.”

“Everything that I told you and your friend was correct, sir”, he said frostily. “Excuse me.”

“What about the maid?” I demanded.

He looked at me as if I were quite mad!

“Yes, a maid came out of one of the rooms and went into another”, he said. “I think that she came out of the study by Philip's room and went into the spare bedroom next door, two doors down from the scene of the crime. But there is no access to the rooms either side from that one. I did not see her come out again but then I was hardly looking for her.”

I smiled to myself. I could now see _how_ this evil act had been done, and if the family lawyer could answer my question for him the way in which I expected, I would also know _why._ But I still had to secure the proof which, I hoped, had not yet been disposed of.

I thanked the doctor and found Mr. March easily enough. He looked at me suspiciously but confirmed what I had said, although he reasserted that Mr. Bessborough could not possibly have committed the crime. I then went to the latter's room. What I had hoped to find was not there, but after the study also yielded nothing I found what I wanted in an ugly black chest in the spare bedroom, two doors away from the scene of the crime. Using a spare sheet I took it and moved it into the wardrobe in the room next door, then turned the key in the lock before pocketing it, all the time shaking my head at the evil that Mankind was capable of when it came to money.

MDCCCLXXV

After one more task I returned to join Watson and the sergeant, passing Mr. Bessborough as he left the interview room. I was not surprised to learn that he had admitted under duress that the late Mr. Holder had had an affair with a 'lady of negotiable affection' down in London some time back and a child had resulted, nor that Mr. Bessborough having learned of this had pressured Mr. Holder to 'come clean' with Miss Bessborough. 

“She was so disgusted that she shot him, I suppose”, the sergeant sighed. “Motive, means – it was common knowledge that she always carried a pistol with her – and opportunity. She had the lot!”

I did not have time to tell them of my findings immediately as Mr. Geoffrey March arrived to the room. He was very much the typical lawyer; elderly, confident and on his guard. I was not at all surprised when he invoked client confidentiality in refusing to discuss his conversation with the late Mr. Holder. He thought that he had stayed with the man for closer on half an hour rather than twenty minutes although he confirmed that he had descended before the clock struck the half-hour, leaving a clear ten to fifteen minutes before Miss Bessborough's having entered the room, but otherwise his recollections of the evening tallied perfectly with everyone else's. He stated categorically that no-one apart from the three of them had entered the murdered man's room, and as I had expected did not mention the maid. 

“He was the last one to see Mr. Holder alive”, the sergeant noted once he had left. “It really does look as if Miss Bessborough shot Mr. Holder, loath though I am to think such a thing in this day and age.”

“It may be worth investigating to see if he has been stealing money from the estate”, Watson mused. “Though how he could have committed the crime given what we know I simply cannot see.”

I remained silent for now, to see what our final witness might have to say for himself. Mr. James Tarleton was a handsome dark-haired fellow in his early thirties and looked every inch the nobleman. His account matched up perfectly with those of the other witnesses; I could see that the sergeant was thinking it matched maybe a shade _too_ perfectly.

“I would like to ask one question if I may”, I said politely, looking at the sergeant who nodded his permission. “You did not entertain any feelings for the lady yourself?” 

The nobleman blushed fiercely. Watson looked at me in astonishment, clearly wondering how I had known to ask that.

“I am a gentleman, Mr. Holmes”, Mr. Tarleton said acidly. “Whatever their own feelings, gentlemen do _not_ make advances to the fiancées of other gentlemen even if an engagement has not yet been formalized. Such a thing would be insupportable!”

I smiled inwardly at his forthrightness as the sergeant indicated that he could leave. 

“This is bad”, the sergeant said heavily once the nobleman had gone. “A murder _and_ a suicide.”

“Not quite“, I said. “A double murder made to look like a murder and a suicide. More importantly, one that can be proven as such.”

Both Watson and the sergeant stared at me incredulously.

“How can you know that?” the sergeant demanded.

I looked at him thoughtfully. The law was all very well in its way, but sometimes one had to achieve justice by other methods.

“You are a decent man, sergeant”, I said slowly. “What Doctor Watson and I are about to do is arguably unethical but will, if what I believe to be the truth is indeed what happened, enable you to prove that Miss Bessborough did not murder Mr. Holder and that she did not subsequently take her own life.”

“And you think....”

“It might be better if the official representative of the law was otherwise engaged for the next half-hour or so”, I said gently. “I know that you have men posted outside the house; you might move them close to all the exits and alert them to a possible escape attempt, although I myself think it unlikely. Then the house-keeper is waiting for you downstairs and it would only be natural for you to spend time interviewing the staff. Plus her coffee-cake is quite delicious!”

The sergeant nodded silently and left the room without a word. I went to the door and summoned the butler, then returned to the centre of the room and extracted three things from my pocket. One was the scented candle from the murder room, the second was a plain white envelope and the third a folded piece of paper.

“I do not see how anyone other than Miss Bessborough _could_ have killed Mr. Holder”, Watson said plaintively. “All the witnesses assured us that no-one else entered the room.”

“They lied about that”, I said dismissively. “Although to be fair, they did not know that they lied.”

He was clearly about to ask him how I could possibly know that for a fact when there was a knock at the door. I looked at him and mouthed the word 'murderer'. 

“Enter!” I called out.

The door opened and Watson very clearly had to fight hard to suppress a gasp at the gentleman who came through it. It was Mr. Philip Bessborough.

MDCCCLXXV

I took a pen out of my pocket and laid it on the folded paper before turning to our visitor.

“Mr. Bessborough”, I said sharply, “time is short. I have informed Sergeant Huntington that he will know the identity of the murderer of your sister and her almost-fiancé before the evening is out.”

The fellow looked puzzled.

“But I thought....” 

“You will therefore do me the courtesy of signing this confession”, I interrupted, gesturing to the table. “Ten minutes after you so do it will be placed in the sergeant's hands. What you choose to do in that time is your own business but as I am sure you are aware the sergeant has men posted around the grounds, and they have been alerted to prevent anyone leaving. There are two ways out for you, sir; if you are a gentleman you will choose the only honourable one.”

“Sir, I must protest!”

Watson was looking at me in amazement. 

“Very well”, I said heavily. “I will first say _how_ you did it, then I will say _why_ you did it. Firstly, you lied over Mr. Holder having fathered an illegitimate child in London. Documents I found when I searched the house show that _you_ were the one who did that, and that they were in Mr. Holder's locked writing-desk showed that he was aware of that fact. He used that knowledge as leverage to force you to accept his suit for your sister, despite the fact that you would much have preferred her to make a more prestigious match with Mr. Tarleton.”

“Sir!”

“You planned it very well”, I continued. “You knew that your sister always arrived back at the same time every Saturday from her meeting, so a few moments before she was due you walked up the corridor, entering not Mr. Holder's room but the spare bedroom two doors down.”

“That is impossible!” Watson objected. “No-one was seen to go along that corridor between Mr. March's descent and Miss Bessborough's return.”

I turned to look at him. I knew from certain unsubtle family members that I sometimes got a little passionate about certain things, and there must have been a look about me that caused him to edge backwards slightly. I still kept an eye on Mr. Bessborough though; I did not trust him not to have a gun in his pocket, although if he had tried anything I was quite prepared to use my own and shoot through my jacket. One did not give a murderer an inch.

“When the gentlemen downstairs all stated that no-one used that corridor between Mr. March's descent at about twenty-five past eight and Miss Bessborough's arrival at twenty minutes to nine”, I said, “they were not being strictly truthful. What they meant was no-one _important_ used it. When during that time a maid came out of one of the rooms and entered another, it barely registered with the gentlemen downstairs. Not even that the maid was carrying a set of clothes – _because that 'maid', sir, was you!_

Mr. Bessborough had gone a deathly shade of white. I turned back to him.

“I have now retrieved the maid's uniform which you appropriated”, I said crisply. “So what next? The spare bedroom is one of a set of rooms each of which has a small balcony, and it was easy for you to go out and cross to the balcony of Mr. Holder's bedroom which is in a corner of the building. Once your sister was with Mr. Holder you burst in through the connecting door and shot him. Your sister screamed, but you knew because of the layout of the house that it would take the gentlemen downstairs a clear minute to reach the door and rather longer to break though it as you were about to lock it. You then killed your own flesh and blood, hence your sister's dying look of hatred.”

The man was shaking now. I ploughed mercilessly on.

“You then locked the door”, I said. “This in itself was another point against your sister's guilt; why would she lock herself in when it would only delay the inevitable discovery of 'her' crime? You escaped by doing what you did earlier but in reverse, returning to Mr. Holder's bedroom and then the spare room via the adjoining balconies. You then threw the maid's costume into a chest in the spare bedroom, and changed into your own clothes which you had left there. You had only one problem, namely that you might be seen emerging two doors away from where everyone thought you to be, but in the confusion and with so many people focussed on the scene of the crime, you banked correctly on no-one noticing such a minor detail.” 

“You also did two things before leaving the scene of the crime, which I shall admit were cunning indeed. You placed the unlit lavender candle on the table behind the door such that it would be overturned when the men outside broke through, and you threw a bag of lavender grains onto the fire.”

“Why would he do that?” Watson asked, clearly puzzled.

“Because he wanted to drive home the idea that the murder room's _balcony_ played no part in the proceedings”, I said, “hence it had to be an 'inside job' as they call it. Had the doors outside have been open then the smell would have quickly dissipated. Unfortunately that move was also your undoing. In this envelope I have a sample of the ashes from that fire. A scientific analysis will show that they include the remains of lavender and indeed I see from your own hands that a single grain has become lodged in your index fingernail.”

The man looked down in horror and let out a sob.

“His own sister!” Watson exclaimed, aghast.

“I talked with Mr. March earlier”, I said, “and he confirmed that Miss Bessborough was a full co-heiress to the estate. By eliminating her before she had any children he ensured that he would inherit everything, and by eliminating Mr. Holder he guaranteed that his own dark secret would never see the light of day.”

The man turned a piteous face towards us both.

“Have mercy!” he begged.

“It is solely for the sake of Miss Bessborough that I am offering you a way out”, I said angrily. “Personally I would like to see you swing for what you did, to suffer a fraction of what she suffered. But sign this confession, the doctor and I will witness it, and we shall only hand it to the sergeant ten minutes after your departure from this room. I am sure that you still have the gun in your room sir; it will be a fitting end that the murder weapon is used to remove the murderer.”

The man nodded dumbly, reached for the pen and scrawled something almost illegible at the bottom of the paper. Watson counter-signed and we both watched as he lurched from the room, a broken man.

“Is it really right to let him out this way?” Watson asked as I signed my name as well.

I sighed.

“Without this”, I said, holding up the confession, “the case against him is dangerously weak. Even if he was prosecuted in a court of law, his lawyer would try to defend him by besmirching his sister's name and claiming that he was trying to protect her. She does not deserve such a foul epitaph. No, my friend. As at Oxford, justice and the law do not always make good bedfellows.”

MDCCCLXXV

Five minutes later there was a single shot from an upstairs bedroom....

MDCCCLXXV

Two days later and my having narrowly survived an utterly dreadful visit from Mother who had read of the murder on her way up, I got to finally spend a full day with Watson. He was even more pleasant company than I had remembered, and his bluff no-nonsense attitude reminded me a little of Stamford, who had always been quite willing to tell me when I was being a nuisance. I did not like that of course but I had enough sense to know that my character needed such curbs or I might end up like the frightful Randall or the insufferable Hilton. A terrible thought!

It was a sunny day just three days before his departure for London when I finally found the courage to ask him The Question.

“Your full-time course finishes next summer?” I asked, as we walked back to the Medical Centre. He nodded.

“It does”, he said with a sigh. “And I shall have the indubitable joy of trying to find employment and rooms on the basest of salaries.”

“You said once that they had offered you the chance to return to Northumberland and find a doctor's post there”, I said.

He was clearly surprised at my having remembered that, as if the sound of Stamford torturing that so-called musical instrument of his would ever let me forget England's most northerly county. It sounded like that time Randall had sat on one of the house-cats; fortunately Fluffy-Bunnykins had been fine and Mother had clouted Randall for being so careless.

“I plan on staying in London”, he said, to my relief. “As you know we sold the family house when I moved here and my brother Stevie is barely started up on his course up in Edinburgh. Besides job opportunities are so much greater down here although I shall have to quit the hospital accommodation once I start practice.”

I hesitated. I was never nervous around people as a rule yet this was. I sensed. one of the most important moments in my young life.

“I was wondering”, I said slowly, “if you might consider sharing lodgings with me. I know that I am not the easiest person in the world to get along with but you seem more able to tolerate me than most of my fellow humans. At least say that you would consider it?”

He was visibly shocked and I thought for one horrible moment that he was going to say no. Then he smiled. I have never felt so utterly relieved!

“Yes”, he said. “I would definitely consider it.”

He smiled that quietly pleased smile that I would come to know so well and I thought that he really was a most handsome fellow. Even better, someone that could put up with me and my very occasional eccentricities. I was one very lucky man.

MDCCCLXXV

I wired Mother to tell her of my plans – I thought better to have her react from a safe distance – and for some strange reason she wired back a simple 'ah'. Clearly there had been an error in the telegraph-office, yet whatever the rest of that message had been, it never reached me. How odd.

MDCCCLXXV


	7. The Menace From Maes-y-cwmmer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> December 1875. Sherlock has his first case with another policeman friend, this time Sergeant Stanley Hopkins. The easy-going Anglo-Scot is having problems with his new inspector who has more than one reason to make his life difficult if not impossible – but Sherlock finds the answer from the most unlikely of sources!

There were few certainties in the world of 1875. Death. Taxes. Mother's stories being..... Mother's stories. And idiotic elder siblings going too far.

Before my next case Randall achieved something quite impressive, to wit a prank that Guilford had planned but had been unable to do as he was still recovering from The Goldfish Incident. The rest of my family (Mother, Father, Guilford and Evelith) had moved back to the old house as it had been repaired by now, and part of those repairs had involved connecting it to the new sewage system which had been completed that September by the engineer Mr. Joseph Bazalgette. Guilford's prank, which Randall actually carried out just days after the move, involved all the toilets of the house and.... well, a move back down the road again as the place reportedly stank to high Heaven. Mother was Seriously Displeased (a Level Six), and Randall was more than a little surprised when there were not some immediate and painful consequences.

Frankly, even he should have known better. Mother decided that since her son was so fond of sewage, he would have a full month working at a sewage works dealing with the stuff, including inspecting the new drains and sewers! She even wrote to Mr. Disraeli informing him that her boy would not be at work for a month but if that was a problem she could find time to come to Downing Street to discuss the matter in person. The answer came back half an hour later by express courier; there was no problem at all!

As I have said, sometimes all it needs is the right motivation. And the prospect of a visitation from Mother is most definitely the right motivation!

There was one other event of note that autumn and it was a major one which would threaten some serious international repercussions. Ever since the Franco-Prussian War Great Britain and France had been edging closer together in the face of German aggression, and my brother Mark had told me that he hoped some sort of deal might be struck to iron the many conflicts between our various colonial holdings around the world. But all that nearly went up in flames when Mr. Disraeli, our esteemed prime minister, was found to have purchased Egypt's forty-four per cent stake in the Suez Canal, in an area of Africa which the French (who had pretty much built that waterway in the face of British opposition) regarded as their own – oh yes, and in getting the money to pay for it he had lodged the entire British Empire as security! Paris threw a fit, but the deal was done and they had to just lump it.

MDCCCLXXV

The two most well-known policemen who dropped by at our various lodgings over the years (and nearly always on my current landlady's baking days) were of course Tobias Gregson and Gawain LeStrade, two gentlemen who were working on a love-hate relationship but had not yet quite gotten round to the love part. _And certainly never would!_ However in the early years there was a third caller before some rather unfortunate events not of his making necessitated a move back to his native Roxburghshire. That Stanley Hopkins came from the same county as Watson's late mother had helped cement our friendship and during his time in the capital my friend would treat him and his family for free, as part of the essential philanthropy that every good doctor practices.

Hopkins was a nondescript sort of fellow, except that he had unusual chestnut coloured hair of the sort that my landlady had to use some strange-smelling dye in an attempt to achieve (I saw the picture of the supposed finished product on the box it came in one day), but always ended up looking the colour of a strained tea-bag. He was not ugly _per se_ but he did not seem to have much in the way of physical prowess, although I knew from LeStrade that this was misleading as he had run down several villains who had thought to have eluded him. At this time he was married with three young children and I had thought him comfortably settled, someone who even the Metropolitan Police Service would surely promote to inspector when he had served his time as sergeant some five years from now. Even they could not be so stupid as to overlook a man of his talents.

(I would sadly be proven wrong in this, although to be fair it was external events that would one day threaten Hopkins's deserved promotion until I stepped in and sorted things for him). 

The sergeant had a naturally lugubrious face, but today he seemed more down than normal. I asked what was amiss.

“We have a new inspector at the station, sir”, he said glumly. “Mr. Mathews.”

Oh dear. Mr. Timothy Mathews was Welsh. Not that I have anything against the Principality but unfortunately Mr. Mathews was militantly Welsh to the point that he had an open and utter loathing for everything east of Offa's Dyke and the Wye. 

_(I would later have near-fatal dealings with another man of that surname, but the two men were I should say here not related)._

I stared at my visitor curiously.

“Why would a Welshman object to someone like yourself, Hopkins?” I asked.

“Two reasons, sir”, he sighed. “He hated me partly because I an betwixt and between, but mostly because of my mother.”

I could see the first of those, in that Hopkins had never been either definitely Scottish or definitely English like some people seem to feel they have to be nowadays. Cultures were strange things; Watson's mother was Scottish but he generally disliked that country and he himself was entirely English, while LeStrade's and Gregson's superior Inspector MacDonald looked every one of his seventy-eight inches the barely tamed Celtic warrior yet was also entirely English. But what did Hopkins's mother have to do with anything?

“Your mother?” I asked, perplexed.

“She was a Mortimer¹, sir,”, he said. “They are one of the old Marcher Lord families; she is no relation to the ones still there but the name is enough for him to hold it against me.”

I frowned. I knew that there was sometimes a fine line between discipline and bullying, like the difference between the ways in which Carl talked to (scared the hell out of) his soldiers and Randall talked to (irritated the hell out of) those people under him at work. Which was why Carl was respected as well as feared, while Randall was just loathed. And if this Mr. Mathews had only just moved in then he would likely be there for some time; they would not move him on until he had either proved himself or made such an egregious error that he needed to be moved on. Even then such a thing might be covered up, as was the way with any large organization.

Now that was an idea.....

“I need to think about this for a time”, I said. “But I will definitely try to help you, Hopkins.”

“Thank you, sir.”

MDCCCLXXV

I had been about to write to Watson when Hopkins had called so I mentioned the matter to him in my letter along with sundry other news. We were only three weeks out from Christmas, not that I had any particular plans apart from making sure to pay one of my policeman friends to come round to the family house and request my presence on an urgent case, or at least one urgent enough to get me out of Mother's annual Yuletide Reading (they at least owed me that for all the cake!). Since Hopkins was in trouble just now I would ask him this year.

A few days later I went round to visit Mark who I had not seen for a while, and found him too looking depressed. It could not have been one of Mother's stories as I knew she was still rushing to get her 'Christmas Surprise' ready, so I asked what was wrong.

“Kai”, he sighed. “His uncle died up in Edinburgh.”

There was clearly more to it than that. I waited patiently.

“He was.... you know. Like me.”

“He was prone to wave his arm about in a vague manner?” I teased.

He scowled at me for that.

“He left Kai his house”, he said, “and some of his relatives are contesting it. I said I would help him but.... in order to inherit it he has to live in it.”

Now I saw it. Being Mark he had as ever done the decent thing, much as he had not wanted to.

“You said that he should go, but you did not want him to”, I said.

He nodded glumly.

“I promised that as well as the legal help, I would have a word to get him moved from the Great Northern to the North British Railway”, he said. “They are both part of the East Coast group so there should be no problem with that.”

“I am sure that your government work might necessitate you going to the Scottish capital from time to time?” I prompted.

He sighed heavily.

“We had a good thing going”, he said, “but we never had what Logan and Ajax have. Although I suppose that I still have Balin and Balan.”

“True”, I agreed.

“Sometimes even at one and the same time!”

I glared at him. To think that he was one the siblings that, for some strange reason, I actually liked!

MDCCCLXXV

This matter of Hopkins's was small and, many would say, inconsequential, but I wished to make notes on it for two reasons. Firstly it was the first instance in which I directly helped him out, and secondly, it was one of a small number of cases in which Watson provided a solution for. I know that in our later years together it galled him that several who remarked on his writings claimed that he was merely a sidekick or a mere observer of my natural brilliance, but there was a number of cases where he himself was instrumental in finding a solution, Or in this instance, at least pointing me in the right direction.

A few days after leaving Carl I received a letter back from my friend. I immediately worried as to why he was writing back so soon but it turned out that as part of his studies he had had to head off to Norwich for two weeks for some reason or other, so was writing now as he expected to be very busy once he was there. He said that Inspector Mathews's bullying ways might well be as a result of the way in which he had been raised, which set me thinking. I contacted Moira and she made some inquiries, and sure enough my friend had been right. Even better, there was a relatively easy way to effect a solution.

I did mean 'relatively' easy.

MDCCCLXXV

It was difficult for me to be in at the conclusion to this matter, but as I felt it might be somewhat diverting I made the effort. On the day in question I went round to Hopkins's police-station and, having carefully checked the time, made sure to enter at just after eleven o' clock. Given that the people I expected here would have left Paddington Station about ten minutes ago, that gave me just enough time.

Sure enough I found Hopkins at the desk looking thoroughly fed-up while Inspector Mathews droned out about some matter concerning paperwork which, presumably, would have brought about the end of civilization as we know it had someone gone and filled in a box incorrectly. I had heard that the Welsh were supposed to be a musical race but the Inspector's drone reminded me of a half-asleep station-announcer trying to overcome a malfunctioning tannoy system.

Luckily I did not have to wait long as in less than five minutes, two ladies entered the station. Both were in their mid-forties and clad in enough black to have kept a funeral business very happy. They were talking at (not to) each other as they entered but both drew breath as they reached the desk. The sergeant looked expectantly at them, thereby missing the look of utter horror on his fellow policeman's face.

“Timmy!”

That was the eldest, whom I knew to be Miss Olwen Mathews, sister to the shocked fellow behind the desk. Who could likely have heard her if she had still been back in Paddington!

“I told you he was here”, her sister Miss Owena Mathews said. “How wonderful! It has been far too long.....”

“The train journey down was quite terrible!” her sister cut in. “I shall most definitely be writing to the Great Western Railway and demanding an explanation for.....”

“We are here at last”, Miss Owena said (I secretly admired the way that both were apparently able to talk without having to draw breath). “I know that dear Timmy will be happy to have us around again.”

I could see that that was the moment when the horrific realization struck their brother. He gasped.

“You,,, you are only here for a visit?” he said, in a voice that had more than an undertone of begging.

“Of course not, Timmy!” Miss Olwen said. “We are here to stay!”

Sergeant Hopkins was good, keeping a straight face like that in his superior's evident rising panic.

“But where will you stay?” the inspector asked. “Hotels are expensive, my dears, and.....”

“Stop being silly, Timmy!” Miss Owena said firmly. “You always told us in your far too infrequent letters home – which reminds me; I wish to talk to you on that subject – that you had a very large house. Now we can help fill it for you.”

“But.... but.....”

“Only goats butt”, Miss Olwen said firmly. “Take the rest of the day off, Timmy, and you can show us to our rooms. Then we can set about deciding what needs to be changed.”

“I can take over here, sir”, Sergeant Hopkins said in what was presumably an attempt to be helpful. Or more likely to increase his superior's sufferings as the inspector glared at him and opened his mouth to object. But not quickly enough; somehow the sisters had managed to lift the desk and were either side of him, escorting their brother to his doom.

Hopkins and I just about managed to hold it together until they had both gone!

MDCCCLXXV

Inspector Mathews put in for an immediate transfer, presumably thinking that that would rid him of his terrible siblings (and I knew all about terrible siblings!). He was certainly not in a position to annoy my friend any more who told me that he was looking increasingly careworn over the months the followed, especially as for some reason his transfer request was mysteriously (ahem!) help up for some time. Then a post came up in the Rhymney Valley in Wales, only a few miles from his and his garrulous sisters' home village of Maes-y-cwmmer. He sold (gave) them his London home and decamped back to Wales, where he could finally enjoy some peace and quiet. 

I very generously waited at least a full month before arranging for his sisters to follow him there.

Well, sort of a full month. It was more than a week.

More-ish?

MDCCCLXXV

_Notes:_   
_1) One of the families who came over in the Norman Conquest, and whose name derives from the Norman village of Mortemer. Appointed as one of the Welsh Marcher Lords (i.e. given free rein to try to conquer adjoining parts of Wales), they rose in prominence and came close to the crown when first Roger Mortimer (1287-1330) became lover to Queen Isabella and effective ruler of England through the young King Edward The Third until that monarch came of age and had him put to death, then Roger's great-grandson Edward (1376-1409) who was heir presumptive under King Richard The Second until that king's deposition by King Henry The Fourth. The lands later passed to the House of York as did their claim to the throne, and was hence one cause of the Wars Of The Roses (1455-1487)._

MDCCCLXXV


	8. Guns And Roses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> January 1876. Sherlock is asked by one of his professors to help out a former servant, who stands to lose his job over an incident of apparent carelessness that nearly got someone killed. But who is really scheming up in the nearby Isle of Ely?  
> Also mentioned as the case of the Davenokes of Shoreswood Hall.

Foreword: This was as it happened to be my only ever investigation that took place in the Isle of Ely. This watery area did not become a county in its own right until the Local Government Act of 1888 (effective 1889) but is of a notably different character to neighbouring Cambridgeshire of which it was then a part. The name, Watson later told me, comes from the fact that before the Fens were drained, 'Eel Island' as its name implies was indeed an island. How he intends to become a doctor when his mind is cluttered with such utterly useless information, Lord alone knows!

MDCCCLXXVI

After the Hopkins case and my 'talkative' resolution to same, I of course made a point in writing back to Watson and thanking him for his role in providing a solution. I wanted to mention about our sharing rooms when the current part of his course finished that summer but, coward that I was, I could not find a way to ask without seeming desperate. Which of course I was not.

Anxiety is _not_ the same as desperation!

The start of the new year had seen heavy snows across England, and these were a contributory factor to one of the worst railway-accidents of the decade. At Abbots's Ripton in Huntingdonshire the heavy snows had frozen the signal mechanisms such that although the signalman had tried to set his signals to danger, they had been frozen in the 'clear' position and the snow meant that he was unable to see them. That and the trains continuing to run at full-speed in spite of the dreadful conditions led to a double-collision that included the 'Special Scotch Express', the train later (1924) called the 'Flying Scotsman'. This disaster cost fourteen lives and led to a major change in railway practices for the better; from then on signals were always set at danger and only cleared to allow a train to pass. It would likely be better remembered had it not been pushed from the public's memory by a much more dramatic and deadly disaster some three years later, one to which I and my friend would have a connection.

MDCCCLXXVI

It was the day after the disaster that my Home Tutor Inglis Atkinson again asked for my help over one of my fellow students. Although this time it was more someone outside the University whose life was threatened with ruination because of one of my fellow students.

“Something has changed in you, Sherlock”, Inglis said as he poured me a coffee (I still did not visit him solely for his excellent beans; it was just a coincidence that he had had a delivery of some that morning). “I know that stumbling across two dead bodies can affect a fellow but you seem somehow.... lighter these days.”

I reddened at his perceptiveness. Yes, I had felt happier ever since I had plucked up the courage to approach Watson about our possibly taking rooms together after the Hall murders last year, and frankly even a teenage schoolgirl would have blushed at my sappiness over such a simple thing. Yet even back in Oxford I had felt some sort of connection to the fellow, and for the first time in my life I actually wanted a friend.

“I met someone who I knew from before, and who has agreed to take rooms with me when I return to London”, I said lightly. “You know how expensive that is down there, and I am finding it quite lonely in Queen Square.”

I should have known that he would have seen through that as well; he knew full well that I could have afforded a house on my own with my income. Also that I was very much a loner and had no problem with my own company for long periods of time – growing up in my family environment I had come to more than appreciate it! – although there were one or two people (especially a certain Northumberlander) who I could, I suppose, tolerate. Inglis was my favourite tutor, not just because he was as I have said close in age to me but because he was a brilliant observer of humanity, something that I too wished to be. 

Although at times that ability could be borderline annoying.

“Apart from the obvious advantage of avoiding your fearsome mother's 'unique' stories”, he smiled, “I do not think that finding a room-mate would make that much of a change in you.”

“You will meet my mother at my graduation this summer”, I said firmly, “and she may even bring some of her stories with her. She is currently working on 'Thunderball', some horror about a giant rubber ball that pulls people in and then 'exhausts’ them!”

“Alas and alack!” he said with absolutely no sincerity whatsoever, “I shall miss the ceremony as I must return to London and my brother Iain. I shall _so_ miss seeing her!”

He really was terrible at times, almost as bad as Watson. That was probably why we got on so well.

“But it is fortunate that you dropped by today”, he said, smiling for some reason at where I was perhaps staring a little too adoringly at my coffee-cup. “Do you know young Tudor Davenoke at all?”

I was about to shake my head when I remembered. Ugh!

“That insufferable idiot over at Higgins”, I said, distastefully. “Tall, thin and blond, too pompous and prideful even for that college. I had dinner there one time and he positively _commanded_ me to pass him the salt! I told him that I would not, but I could recommend where he could obtain a useful book on how to conduct himself at the dinner-table. He refused to talk to me for the rest of the evening; I presume that he considered that a punishment in some strange way.”

He smiled.

“His family were among the first supporters of the then-exiled Henry Tudor, so did very well when he was victorious at Bosworth and became King Henry The Seventh”, he said. “He was actually born plain Thomas but changed his name when they rescued him from the workhouse; he is a distant cousin to the current Lord Davenoke but the last of his own particular branch. Sadly his good fortune led to him acquiring all his current airs and graces, which as you say do nothing for him. He especially hates it when people call him Tommy, which as you can guess his attitude prompts many to do. I wondered if you might turn your investigative prowess to something that happened at his family's place, Shoreswood Hall. It is all quite convoluted but it does involve an acquaintance of mine.”

“You are making it sound quite the challenge”, I smiled.

“You see, Iain and I had a butler called Charlton. He is about thirty years of age now, a nondescript sort of fellow but good at heart and very good at his job. He had always wanted to become a gamekeeper so we helped him with that and he eventually ended up at Shoreswood. But there was an accident there this weekend and he looks set to lose his post.”

I looked sharply at him. I may have not yet acquired much in the way of human understanding, but with so many brothers and sisters (several of whom I would have willingly pushed off the nearest cliff, having of course first chained them together), I had rapidly developed an ability to sense when someone was leaving something out. 

He looked back at me and nodded.

“Something was off when Charlton told me about it”, he said. “It took some cajoling and when he first told me I found it hard to believe but, on reflection, I do not see why he would have lied. Young Tommy developed what they call in today's horrible modern parlance a 'man-crush' on Charlton and, as I am sure you can guess, was frankly incredulous that his overtures were rebuffed because he was such an insufferable, pompous, overbearing prig. This happened about a month before the incident with the gun.”

“What incident?” I asked.

“A gun belonging to young Peter Davenoke, Lord Littleport and heir to the place, exploded and slightly injured him”, he said. “Lord Davenoke _claimed_ that Charlton cannot have checked it thoroughly beforehand. I do not believe that for one minute; he was always most conscientious when he worked for us, and I know that he always took great care when handling any weapon.” 

“Where is this place, Shoreswood Hall?” I asked.

“A little way north of Ely near Littleport, so not that far from here”, he said. “I think that there used to be a village of Davenoke but it is not there today.”

I thought for a moment.

“I shall have to go there and make some inquiries”, I said reluctantly. “For one thing there is the fact that your former butler has not been sacked.”

“I would have thought that a good thing?” he asked, surprised.

“For him perhaps”, I said, “but surprising nonetheless. In this day and age a servant who does anything wrong can expect instant dismissal and no reference. Yet you did not say that he had been sacked.”

“He did tell me that he fully expected to be”, he said, “but yes, I suppose that that is surprising. Of course Iain and I would find him something if that did happen; he knows that but I reminded him of it anyway.”

“I am rather afraid that you may well have to”, I said, frowning. “This is not going to be easy. If you send your friend a telegram then I can meet him somewhere, preferably away from his lord and master. I would rather that they not know the matter is being looked into, as I doubt that they will take it well.”

MDCCCLXXVI

I had an uneasy feeling about this matter, such that I had reiterated to Inglis that he should start looking for a new post for his friend right away. Fortunately his job at Tarleton put him in an excellent position to know many whose families employed gamekeepers, so at least that problem might be solved.

Shoreswood Hall itself lay a few miles north of Littleport, the countryside around which I found eerily flat. The Hall had its own station but I had arranged to meet Mr. Francis Charlton in Shoreswood village (which I later learned was officially Shoreswood-cum-Davenoke, the two villages having grown together), and I must say that I rather took to the fellow. He was as my friend had said about thirty years of age, in very good physical condition and with what I believe is nowadays called 'salt-and-pepper' hair, rather unusual for someone of his age. He was not attractive in the conventional sense of the word, but there was a moral rectitude about him that was quite notable. He was able to explain more fully the details of what had happened at the shoot.

“Lord Davenoke had a small party of friends round for a winter shoot”, he told me. “That day it was him, his brother William, His Lordship's son and heir Peter, and me. Lord Peter's gun exploded – lucky he wasn’t hurt, all things considered – and His Lordship said I can't have checked it properly.”

“Did you?” I asked simply.

“Definitely, sir”, he said firmly. “Lord Peter's a good sort, and if anything happened to him we'd get his brother Lord Philip who's..... not so good.”

I admired the way in which he conveyed his complete and utter disdain for the second son without putting it into words. I might have to inquire into that young gentleman.

“What can you tell me about Mr. Tudor Davenoke?” I asked.

He reddened considerably.

“I'm not into that, sir”, he said awkwardly. “You see, I never wanted to marry because I've always been happy being single, but Mr. Tudor, he seemed to think that as he was a Davenoke I should do whatever he wanted. He didn't take it well when I told him where to shove it, if you pardon my French! And all this happening so soon after…. it smelled fishy.”

“Let us move to the next obvious question”, I said. “Given the circumstances I would have expected Lord Davenoke to have fired you instantly. Why did he not?”

He grinned.

“Lady Davenoke, sir”, he said. “She rules the roost round here, as we all know. She said nothing was to be done until they'd had an expert in to look over the gun. She’s very hot on weapons and all that.”

I wondered if the unseen Lady Davenoke had at least half-suspected that there had been more to this ‘accident’, coming as it had so soon after young Tudor Davenoke’s rejection by Mr. Charlton. I doubted that her husband would have told her about that but then the general rule was the bigger the house, the faster gossip seemed to travel in it.

“Did they get an expert in?” I asked. 

He shook his head.

“Lord Davenoke said the other day he'd decided to forget the whole thing”, he said. “But I'm sure he doesn't like me and the slightest slip now will mean I'm out on my ear. I can't be on my guard all day and every day just in case.”

I sighed. It increasingly looked as if I had been right and that Inglis would have to find my client employment somewhere else. Not that I did not think I could not clear Mr. Charlton of the accusations against him, but this Lord Davenoke sounded the sort who would likely find some pretext or other to get rid of my client sooner or later. And he would likely be happier away from such a fellow.

“Lord Peter was uninjured when the gun went off?” I asked.

He thought about that for a moment. I wondered why; either the fellow had been injured or not injured.

“Not as such, sir”, he said eventually. “But.... well, he's always been a nervous cove. He wanted to join the Army though I doubt they'd have taken him though what with his nature, and he's never been that good with a gun. He didn’t come out the one time we had a shoot since.”

I nodded. I began to see where this was going now.

“What happened to Lord Peter's gun?” I asked.

He had to think about that.

“Lord Davenoke took it down to Will – the blacksmith; his place is just across the street from here – to have it destroyed”, he said. “Bad memories, I suppose.”

 _Or getting rid of the evidence_ , I thought wryly. 

I thanked him for his time and promised to continue my efforts to help him.

MDCCCLXXVI

Fortunately human nature is as it always has been, and likely always will be. A short trip across the road and I returned to Cambridge with a firearm, which I took over to Inglis. He had the scientific knowledge that I as yet lacked and was able to find at least something. 

Human nature. Sigh.

MDCCCLXXVI

I called on Mr. Charlton again and ask him two more questions. He looked at me rather strangely over the first, and I was not surprised.

“Their jackets, sir?” he asked querulously.

“Theirs and your own”, I said. “Be assured that I would not ask without a good reason.”

He still looked uncertain but answered me anyway.

“Lord Davenoke had a brown jacket, his favourite one”, he said. “His brother was wearing a green thing, almost lime in colour and horrible; I think his wife bought it for him so he had to wear it. Lord Peter had on a grey jacket, his favourite. I was wearing my green tweeds.”

“What was the weather like that day?” I asked.

“Not bad for January”, he said. “We needed overcoats of course; they all had black ones of one type or another and mine was grey. But we were in the hide when the accident happened so we had all taken them off; it was stuffy in there what with the four of us.”

“Thank you”, I smiled. “I think that you are correct about Lord Davenoke wanting you gone over the incident so it is best that you find somewhere else and soon. Fortunately my tutor and your former employer Mr. Atkinson who brought me onto this case knows lots of families who need gamekeepers, and he has already found one up in Morayshire who he is confident will employ you.”

“But what about a reference, sir?” he fretted. “I'm sure Lord Davenoke won't let me have one, and no-one will touch me without that.”

“That will not be a problem”, I said knowingly. “You will get your reference, I promise.”

MDCCCLXXVI

A few days later I returned to the Isle and this time went to Shoreswood Hall, which was most definitely a Tudor building. I say that because Inglis had been right about the connection to that turbulent dynasty; the designer had clearly been told to wedge as many Tudor Roses into the design as possible! I was admitted to see the lord and lady of the house (I had carefully timed my arrival to ensure that Daphne, Lady Davenoke was present) and noted the same design was part of their family crest displayed rather garishly above the fireplace. 

Money did not always buy taste, apparently.

The lady of the house very much lived up (or perhaps out beyond) my expectations, a huge Amazon at least twice the size of her insignificant little husband. Worse, she simpered at me! Ugh!

“I felt it incumbent to call, madam”, I said politely, “as I have come into information about the recent accident that befell your son Peter.”

David, Lord Davenoke was it turned out not good at covering his emotions. His face fell at once but fortunately for him he was slightly behind his wife so she did not notice.

“Poor Peter was so shocked by that”, she said, somehow simpering while speaking (impressive and worrying!). “But how have _you_ come into that information, young sir?”

I was strongly tempted to try hiding behind her myself, with the looks that she was giving me! But this was for a friend, or at least a friend of a friend, so I steeled myself.

“I was asked by a former employer of your gamekeeper to investigate whether he had indeed been responsible for the misfiring of your son's gun”, I said.

“Had the thing destroyed”, Lord Davenoke said shortly, his confidence clearly returning. “Damn dangerous!”

“It is indeed dangerous, although perhaps not to your eldest son”, I said. “You took it to the local blacksmith and did indeed ask him to destroy it; however he had not yet got round to so doing so I was able to purchase it from him.”

The nobleman's face had turned ashen.

“I then took it back to my college where, fortunately, I know someone who is an expert scientist”, I said. “He examined the chamber for me and found that it had been packed with an explosive charge. I am sad to report that he found something else. It was charred and burned, but there was a tiny thread of cotton that had caught in the outer chamber of the gun when it had been closed. Under chemical analysis he discovered that it had been a piece of _brown_ cotton.”

It was like one of Inglis's science experiments where he added one solution to another then waited for the explosion. Had the nobleman thought for a moment he would have realized just how unlikely what I had just said was, but shock had clearly overwhelmed him. He was also busy inching slowly towards the door while his wife worked it all out.

“Peter's jacket is grey”, she frowned, “and Bill has that horrible green thing that Ellen bought him for some reason. The only person there in a brown jacket that day was.....”

She had got it and turned to face her husband. The look that she gave him was positively frightening!

“Your husband wished to deter your son from following through on his wish to join the Army”, I said, “and attempted do to do by frightening him away from using a gun. He was also prompted by his foster-son’s rejection at the hands of your gamekeeper, for which he sought revenge. He therefore killed two birds with one stone, as they say.”

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Holmes”, Lady Davenoke said in a tone that should have carried a health warning for its sickly sweetness. “My husband and I have some urgent matters to discuss. If you would be so kind?”

“I can see myself out”, I smiled.

MDCCCLXXVI

That smile may or may not have gotten wider as I heard an anguished scream before I reached the front door, but there was no-one around to see it so it did not.

MDCCCLXXVI

Lady Davenoke duly provided a most excellent reference for Mr Charlton who a result was able to take up his new post in Grantown-on-Spey, where he was very happy; like Hopkins I would see him North of the Border one day. Inglis was delighted that I had been able to help his friend. And best of all, I had another telegram from Watson when I got back to Cambridge which once again put me in a good mood.

What? I was allowed to be happy.

MDCCCLXXVI


	9. An Eye-Watering Mystery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> July 1876. One of Sherlock's neighbours in Queen Square would really like to know why there was a dead body in a storeroom that he was definitely not poking around for no good reason. The answer will involve the detective in a degree of criminality.

I may have remarked to Watson on the very odd occasion – certainly not _ad nauseam_ as irritating siblings claimed – that a brain was like a room, and one had to be selective in what information to fill it up with. This was because I knew that he found my startlingly different levels of knowledge on certain subjects surprising. For example, anything that might be useful in my investigations I would absorb, including what was going on in the world of politics as that almost invariably led to problems that would involve me sooner or later. I also found the human interactions in that world curious, whereas other areas such as history held little if any interest for me. At least until I met my friend and realized that in any relationship one needs to take on board some of the other person's interests because..... well, just because.

That summer I was monitoring with some alarm developments in the Balkans, where the ailing Ottoman Empire was being eyed hungrily by Russia, Prussia and Austria-Hungary, especially the last of these. There had long been an uneasy balance in the region, Ottoman rule being maintained mainly because the various Slavic nationalities hated each other more than they hated the Turk, but now it was clear that Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary were all eyeing up potential gains in the area, especially after they had signed the Berlin Memorandum that year which had made almost impossible demands in Constantinople. Great Britain, wishing to maintain the latter against a Russia which was clearly seeking to gain a foothold in the Mediterranean, was the only major power to reject this but that was enough; it was one of those political situations which would likely end in a horrible mess either way, and perhaps the government might even send Randall out there. 

Only a cruel person would have made a remark about clouds and silver linings at this juncture, so I will not.

MDCCCLXXVI

I had successfully completed my course at Tarleton (first-class with distinction, of course) and had returned to London for a few weeks prior to the tiresome graduation ceremony. I did not like such events on principle, and worse, I knew that Mother would be certain to attend. Thankfully I would then never have to go back there, as the chances of her not doing something embarrassing were about the same as the Pope suddenly turning Protestant!

I had given Mrs. Leadbetter my notice to quit come September and had started looking around for something suitable for two young gentleman in central London. I could as I have said have afforded to buy a house rather than just take rooms, but firstly Watson could not have afforded even a share in such a thing, not for many a long year until he had become established in his profession. Secondly I knew from the experiences of my siblings that Mother was wont to descend on the houses of unmarried offspring and redecorate them to her 'taste'. Except for Logan who lived at one of his Debating Societies, but even he did not fully escape as she often called round and exchanged ideas with the usually silent Ajax. These visits could always be detected because Logan would, incredibly, contrive to look in an even worse state after them!

Do not be silly; of course I never asked what she and Ajax talked about. _I valued my sanity!_

Rooms it had to be, and moderately-priced ones at that. Luckily location was less of an issue; he would wish for somewhere central as would I. But it would have to be in an area that Mother deemed 'acceptable', which adjective I soon found had a close correlation with 'expensive'. I was still searching when this strange matter arose, my last real case from Queen Square which involved my first landlady, Mrs. Leadbetter.

And a dead body.

MDCCCLXXVI

When it came to my neighbours in Queen Square, I generally had as little to do with them as possible, especially the massive female (I _think_ female) in Room Two who had simpered at me most alarmingly! That avoidance included my immediate neighbour in Room Eight, Mr. Simon Bibby, a fellow of about my own age and one of those impossibly nosy people who are always curious about everyone around them, although in fairness all my policemen friends say that such people make their own lives easier. Mr. Bibby worked as a clerk on one of the London railways – the Metropolitan, I think – and what with my time away at Cambridge I hardly ever saw him. 

Until I returned that fateful day and found him sat on the floor in our corridor, his head in his hands. He looked up as I approached and my first thought was that he looked terrible. Even for him.

“Dead!” he muttered.

For all that he was an annoying fellow I had judged that it would take a lot to upset him, so I helped him to his feet, took him into my rooms and gave him a large whisky. He downed it in one go and looked more than capable of managing a second; impressive as I knew that he was virtually teetotal.

“Who is dead?” I asked gently.

He blanched again. I wondered if he would be able to get out an answer, but eventually he did.

“I went to the storeroom downstairs to look for some candles”, he said. “There were none in the one on our floor. I walked in.... and there the fellow was. Sitting there in an old rocking-chair, dead as a door-nail!”

 _In short you took the opportunity to poke around the house and paid a heavy price for your arrant nosiness_ , I thought, perhaps a tad uncharitably but accurately. I gave him a disapproving look.

“I thought that Mrs. Leadbetter kept the storerooms locked?” I said innocently.

He blushed fiercely.

“I, er, know how to get through a locked door”, he admitted.

I decided that that too merited a disapproving look, and he blushed again.

“This must be investigated by the police as a matter of urgency”, I said. “Fortunately I have several policeman friends, and one works at a station nearby, the one at this end of Great Ormond Street. Are you capable of going and fetching him, or would you rather remain here with the body?”

That was arguably a cruel way of putting things as I knew full well which of those options he would go for. It would also enable me to make some initial inquiries while he was gone. He pulled himself to his feet and hurried out of the door; I noted that he turned left and headed for the entrance further away from the deadly storeroom.

Whatever else came out of this case, it might cure my soon to be ex-neighbour of his curiosity for a while!

MDCCCLXXVI

Hopkins's police-station was only a little over five minutes away and Mr. Bibby would certainly not be dallying, so I hurried downstairs to the scene of the possible crime. I did not wish to enter the room although I could easily have done (unlike Mr. Bibby I had a good reason for being able to open locked doors), so contented myself with walking down the corridor towards the storeroom. It was dark and rather dingy, and I definitely caught a loom of alarm on the face of my landlady's husband as I passed him in the corridor. Interesting.

The thing that struck me about the location was its lack of access. In order to have placed a body in that room one would have had to have carried it past two other sets of rooms, from either of which someone may have emerged without warning. Mother had of course had everyone in the place checked out by Moira, so I knew that the lady in one set of rooms along this corridor worked as a secretary while the fellow in the other set did casual work down the docks, so he at least had irregular hours. It all seemed very odd, although perhaps not as odd as the strange fruit fetish that the lady up in Room Twelve had (Moira had been a tad too thorough there!).

I wiped my eyes as I stood there; most annoyingly Mr. Leadbetter worked in a perfumery and sometimes used lilac-water, to which I was strongly allergic. Worse, his wife seemed to take a bath in the stuff on a regular basis! Some people were just annoying!

I was about to lean against the wall and await the arrival of Hopkins when I caught sight of the small upright cupboard at the far end of the corridor. There had seemed nothing remarkable about it at first, but looking more closely I could see that it was at a very slight angle. I hated any form of untidy presentation (and I had no idea why so many of my family members smiled when I told them that), so I went up to take a closer look. Sure enough, there were some faint marks on the parquet floor where the item had been moved. They had been polished over but not quite well enough. 

The cupboard almost completely filled the corridor but luckily I was slender enough to ease a way up the side. Aha! Behind it was a door which obviously led to the alleyway along the back that was shared with the houses in either Russell Square or Southampton Row. That had to be the means by which the body had entered the house – but what had it been doing here in the first place?

MDCCCLXXVI

Hopkins arrived looking notably happier, which I knew was due to the fact that his new Inspector Jones was a great improvement on the departed Inspector Matthews (frankly the station-cat would have been a great improvement on the departed Inspector Matthews!). He spoke with a clearly anxious Mrs. Leadbetter who, I noted, gave him a key but did not accompany him into the storeroom. Soon we were both inside and looking at the scene before us.

The dead man had been in his early forties and had in his time been very finely attired. Regrettably he was afflicted with that strange thing that some gentlemen think acceptable these days, a gold ear-stud, but otherwise he seemed harmless enough. Except for the fact that he was very clearly dead. And in a house where I was staying.

I sighed heavily.

“The landlady and her husband are involved”, I said.

“I thought that too”, he said, “but how did you know, sir?”

“Because my eyes are watering”, I said, “and this fellow positively reeks of lilac water to which I am allergic. Despite that horror in his ear he does not seem the sort to wear a lady's perfume; indeed I can detect some sort of gentleman's cologne which has been swamped with the cheaper scent. Mrs. Leadbetter presumably takes a bath in the stuff, so I have to avoid her where possible.”

He grinned at that, guessing (correctly) that the other reason I avoided my landlady was her habit of simpering at me, even when her husband was standing right next to her!

“How did _you_ know that she was involved?” I asked.

“His ears, sir.”

I looked at him in confusion.

“You know those new finger-print things we do nowadays?” he said. “I read that they think the shapes of a fellow's ears are even more unique. Your landlord's ears has almost no lobes at all, and neither does this fellow.”

And that was why he would go (or should have gone) far in the Metropolitan Police Service.

“A possible family member”, I said. “Which leads to the question; did the Leadbetters murder him for some reason or just hide the body? And if that, who killed him?”

“The police-doctor could help there”, I said. “Once they take the body away, I suggest you go round to where Russell Square meets Southampton Row and make some inquiries there.”

“Why there, sir?” he asked.

“Because the body was almost certainly transferred here from the alleyway out back”, I said. “You will note that the cupboard at the end of the corridor has been moved or possibly even placed there recently to cover the door which leads out that way. Unfortunately and unlike Mr. Bibby I am not nosy enough to have ever come this way, but if you ask him he might be able to say if the cupboard was always there.”

“I will do that, sir”, he said.

MDCCCLXXVI

He did. And he found that a landlady at the top end of Southampton Row had just reported that one of her clients, a Mr. Redvers Leadbetter, had recently departed having left her just a note which, she thought, was not in his usual handwriting. The police-doctor was also able to identify the cause of the death which, rather unpleasantly, explained the motive. My landlady's brother-in-law had owned and run a brothel and had caught something from one of the women who worked there, which in his case had proven fatal. His supremely moral brother had been horrified at what this would do to his own reputation and, on finding the body, had decided to hide it in a storeroom prior to burying it in secret. The authorities were more than a little annoyed at such behaviour but, thankfully, decided that a fine would be more suitable than gaol time. Although the publicity itself was likely a worse punishment for the Leadbetters; they sold their house within six months and left for the Continent.

MDCCCLXXVI

I had thought the case safely solved (certainly not 'dead and buried'; Hopkins was getting dangerously close to rivalling Watson in his dreadful attempts at humour!), but just as I was about to leave Queen Square for the undoubted horror that would be my graduation ceremony, I had a surprise visitor. Watson himself.

He looked terrible!

“Has something happened?” I asked anxiously.

He shuddered by managed to get out an answer.

“I was sat in a restaurant near the Hospital when your mother drew up”, he said, shaking as he spoke.

“She did not have any of her stories on her?” I asked. If my parent had managed to lose me my one real friend in this world I..... well, I would have been upset.

He shook his head.

“No, she was unarmed”, he said (even in shock he retained his dreadful sense of humour; it was a mark of my generous and modest nature that I tolerated that). “She wanted to see if I was all right for you.”

I scowled. It was not as if I was marrying Watson, and the only time Mother had done anything like that before was when she had gone round to see Logan and Ajax shortly after they had met..... oh.

_Oh!_

“She told me that I would do”, he said, mercifully unaware of my inner angst. “Then she told me what she would do if I upset you at all. Ye Gods, how does a lady know such language?”

I smiled at that, although I still worried about just why my mother would have behaved in such a way. It was not as if Watson and I...... well, it was just not. No-one could ever think such a thing.

_Could they?_

MDCCCLXXVI

To cap it all I had to go round and see Mother the very next day. Not, as some might have thought, to plead that she might not embarrass me at my graduation ceremony – I knew not to ask for the impossible – but because she had asked to see me. I truly feared that this was about Watson but she did not even mention him.

At least, not directly.

“And some good news, Sherry-werry”, she beamed just as I was trying to make my escape. “Dear Logan has found someone new for Mark. A most wonderful gentleman called Mr. Little; he showed me a photograph of him and he is so big!”

Although I winced at her frankness I had to admit that she was right in that. Mr. Anthony Little had recently started at Logan's and Ajax's Debating Societies as he had turned twenty-one this past March. He was nearly seven foot tall and built to match, so in the thing that passed for humour at his workplace he was known as 'Tiny'. Although according to Logan, he was definitely not that in _any_ area!

I had dreadful siblings!

“So of course I had to see that he was suitable”, Mother went on. “As one does.”

She looked pointedly at me. For one horrible moment I thought that she was going to mention Watson, but fortunately she passed on to other family members. Phew!

MDCCCLXXVI

In my relief I had, unfortunately, forgotten about that graduation ceremony.....

MDCCCLXXVI


	10. Hanging With Oswald

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> July-August 1876. History repeats itself – but when it comes to a dead man being found hanging from a tree then that calls for an investigation, even if a certain consulting-detective is hundreds of miles away. Not that that stops Mr. Sherlock Holmes!  
> Mentioned elsewhere as the case of Doctor Moore Agar.

_St. Oswald's End_   
_Keynsham Square_   
_London_

_Sunday July 23rd, 1876_

_Dear Holmes,_

_Thank you for your recent letter and your congratulations on a successful conclusion to the first half of my course. I will as you know have to spend a further three years completing various papers for the college and undertaking work experience before I am officially granted the coveted title 'Doctor of Medicine' but at least I have secured a position at a practice in Bloomsbury (the unoriginally named Bloomsbury Practice!) where I have hitherto been working for one day a week as well as covering for absences. Unfortunately there are no vacancies for full-time staff there as yet but they seem happy enough with my work thus far._

_You will see that I have acquired a new address since our last meeting and your departure for your graduation ceremony. I mentioned in my last letter the minor flooding incident which damages a number of our rooms, after which some of us were temporarily placed in an outlying set of rooms in Cowcross Street. However that house was then itself damaged in a fire caused by a stray cinder from the nearby railway line through Farringdon Station; mercifully I was absent when this calamity occurred. I have been exceptionally lucky to be housed at the family home of one my professors who lives in Keynsham Square, not far from the famous Shaftesbury Theatre. He is none other than the famous Doctor Moore Agar upon whom I was fortunate enough to make a most favourable impression by timing my visit to his house to when his daughter Jane was giving birth two weeks ahead of her time. He was truly grateful that I was there to assist his third grandson into the world and has agreed to put me up until I can find accommodation of my own, into which matter I am now looking. The child was named Hazeldine but is healthy despite that._

_This brings me (finally) to the main point of this letter. Since we agreed that a gentleman with your connections would be much more likely to be able to find good rooms, how is your search going? I have made a few inquiries of my own but so far have found nothing except a set of prices that would have landed me in debt until I was one hundred and fifty years old – at least!_

_I wish you luck at your own graduation and also renewed congratulations for having completed your course in four years instead of the usual six. Stamford was most envious when I mentioned that to him as he still has two years to go at Bargate; I did worry that there might be certain repercussions for him after what happened there but fortunately there have been none. As you know he married Mary last year and she is expecting for next month, so he is all of a dither just now. Worse, when he gets stressed he likes to play those dreadful Northumbrian bagpipes of his!_

_Yours sincerely,_

_Doctor John H. Watson_

MDCCCLXXVI

_Tarleton College, Reference #875SAH,_   
_Grantchester,_   
_Cambridge_

_Friday July 28th, 1876_

_Dear Watson,_

_Thank you for your letter. I am sorry for the untimely delay in responding but Mother descended on me immediately rather than wait a few days for the ceremony, and she insisted on taking me for a short break in Skegness of all places to celebrate the end of my course. She is as I think you now know a force of nature hence I always find it easier to give in to her demands; mercifully in her haste she forgot to bring any of her stories with her for which oversight I shall be offering up extra prayers in church this weekend! I arrived back yesterday evening utterly exhausted and read your letter, so my congratulations on your own achievements thus far._

_Thank you for telling me about Stamford. Like you I was concerned that after the 'Gloria Scott' case he might face repercussions since the Bargate College Board showed that they are unacquainted with those things called morals and principles, but fortunately Mother had told them that if she heard of any more misdeeds then she would come down there in person to find out why! I believe that that is what is called 'good motivation'!_

_I have asked around and I have one or two hopeful leads as to rooms, but I think that it might be advisable if you too continue to make efforts in that area. Regrettably I shall not be in the capital until the end of next month as Mother wants to visit some friends in the South of Scotland after my graduation ceremony; the poor souls are unaware of the maelstrom that is about to descend on them! For which they would have my sympathy except I am to be dragged along with her on this_ impromptu _Caledonian caper! Once I have a definitive date for my arrival in the capital I shall of course communicate it to you._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Mr. S. A. Holmes, Esquire_

_Postscriptum: Are you legally allowed to call yourself by the title 'doctor' as of yet? I do not know how these things work._

MDCCCLXXVI

_Tarleton College, Reference #875SAH ,_   
_Grantchester,_   
_Cambridge_

_Monday July 31st, 1876_

_Dear Watson,_

_The graduation ceremony was today, and I do not think that I have ever been more embarrassed in my young life! Most students got to walk across the stage and accept their certificates with polite applause from the audience._ Most _students. One however had to suffer the mortification of his own mother whooping and cheering as if she were at one of those infernal football matches! I am so glad that I am leaving this place never to return!_

_I enclose a list of the places that Mother plans to visit and the approximate dates that we shall be there. Unless of course someone warns the people that she is coming and they decide to flee to the hills. I know that I would!_

_Still blushing,_

_Mr. S. A. Holmes, Esquire_

MDCCCLXXVI

_St. Oswald's End_   
_Keynsham Square_   
_London_

_Wednesday August 2nd, 1876_

_Dear Holmes,_

_Poor you, having to endure that at your own graduation. I hope that you are surviving the trip to the cold North; the fact that it is summer might perhaps make it more bearable or at least less unbearable. I do not know what our dear Queen finds so fascinating about that country, although I suppose that part of it must be the memory of her late husband, or possibly the company of a certain Scottish ghillie? To answer your question, technically speaking I am not supposed to call myself 'Doctor Watson' until I get handed the scroll confirming my_ Medicinae Doctor _, but the hospital has advised me that they generally turn a blind eye to graduates who use the phrase earlier than they should, so a doctor indeed am I!_

_Doctor Agar's house is building up to a small party this Saturday as it is St. Oswald’s Day. I should have mentioned that we have a further connection in that he too comes from Northumberland, from Cornhill right on the Border in his case. He is a most patriotic Northumbrian; he even flies the red-and-yellow flag in his back garden and oftentimes goes on at length about how the Scots stole the old northern part of our ancient English kingdom then made its largest city their capital, Edinburgh. Fortunately neither he nor any of his family play the pipes, Scottish or Northumbrian, so at least I am spared that horror!_

_As well as his younger son Preston who is currently visiting his grand-mother in Brittany for a month, Doctor Agar has three other children two of whom are home for the great day; more than one servant has gossiped that Jane, whose unfortunately-named new arrival I helped coax into the world, is likely playing up a slight relapse in her recovery to avoid having to leave hospital. His younger daughter Sophia is married with two daughters and is pleasant enough. Both the girls are under three but I do not much like her husband, a Mr. Morgan Foliot. He is half-Welsh and half-French, so doubly hates us English. And he has far too high an opinion of himself._

_The doctor’s elder son Rupert is also here; he is one of those anaemic-looking blond boys (I probably should not call him that as he is nearly thirty!) who always seem totally bored with life. He spends most of his time with his books and does not seem to actually_ do _anything for a living. He is also a little too smug for my liking especially since as with Mr. Foliot I see no reason for such an attitude._

_In a rather morbid act (although I did not say as much) Doctor Agar has designated a tree with various gifts for members of the household on it in memory of the original King Oswald who, it was said, has his various body parts hung in a tree after being defeated by the mighty King Penda at the battle of Oswestry (Oswald’s Tree) in the year six hundred and forty two. He most inconsiderately mentioned his plans over dinner the other day and I almost lost my appetite, but there was chocolate blancmange for dessert so I managed to battle through._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Doctor John H. Watson_

_Postscriptum: I forgot to mention; this I suppose at least explains the curious house name._

MDCCCLXXVI

_St. Oswald's End_   
_Keynsham Square_   
_London_

_Sunday August 6th, 1876_

_Dear Holmes,_

_If the general post does what it is supposed to do, then this should reach your stop in Hawick on the same day that you and your mother arrive. I do hope so for the events of last night were quite shocking! They talk of history repeating itself but…. well!_

_The party proceeded as planned up to eight o' clock when Doctor Agar led the family out into the back-garden for a moment of remembrance around the tree. I should have added that it was a very small gathering; a few close friends including the local parish priest who had agreed to say a few words in memory of the battle. Except that when we got to the tree we found there was rather more than the small present boxes on its branches. Sometime during the evening it too, like the one twelve centuries back in Shropshire, had acquired a dead body!_

_Mrs. Foliot not unsurprisingly fainted and everyone was swiftly ushered indoors, Doctor Agar posting three servants to keep watch over the body until the police arrived. A Sergeant Belvedere came within the half-hour and after the body had been hauled down both Doctor Agar and I examined him. A card in his his wallet showed him to have been one Mr. Arthur Byland but apart from the general clutter one might expect a young fellow to have had on his person the only thing of note was a small folding cameo brooch in its box, which contained a lock of hair and a drawing of a lady on one side. Not a professional one; possibly one that the young man had done himself. It had the name 'Polly' written on the back._

_We estimated the time of death to be between six-thirty and seven-thirty, more probably closer to the former which tallied with the servants having finished placing the presents on the tree shortly after six. The cause of death was a single bullet to the heart; the man had been shot at close range, possibly with the gun pressed right into his body which would also explain why nothing was heard. The whole affair was quite shocking; we have no idea why this man apparently came here to get killed and ended up like poor old King Oswald up a tree!_

_In somewhat less dramatic news my own search for lodgings continues, but no luck as yet._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Doctor John H. Watson_

MDCCCLXXVI

_Nonsuch House,_   
_Hawick,_   
_Roxburghshire_

_Wednesday August 9th, 1876_

_Dear Watson,_

_Your news was most interesting but you in your haste to write you appear to have omitted several pertinent items of information. Please supply the following in your next missive:_   
_1) How much money was in the victim's wallet, and in what form?_   
_2) Is it known as to how he gained access to the garden?_   
_3) Did anyone leave the house between six and eight o' clock?_   
_4) How did the gentlemen of the house react to the discovery?_   
_5) Please describe the state and quality of the dead man’s clothes._

_Of course the reason for his death is fairly obvious but as to why he had to die in that particular way is more troubling. I look forward to hearing from you shortly._

_It has rained for the past eight days. I am wet._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Mr. S. A. Holmes, Esquire_

MDCCCLXXVI

_St. Oswald's End_   
_Keynsham Square_   
_London_

_Friday August 11th, 1876_

_Dear Holmes,_

_I suppose that I should have foreseen your interest in this peculiar matter. I did not approach Sergeant Belvedere who seemed quite prepared to suspect_ me _at one stage, but Constable Billington was much more amenable especially after I told him of your successes in Oxford and Cambridge, and how clever you are. I can answer your questions as follows:_  
 _1) The wallet contained six shillings, a threepenny bit, a penny and three farthings¹. There were no notes, which was perhaps curious. There were two bills (unpaid), one for a clothier and one for laundry, totalling just under five shillings. There was also a receipt for a hat – a medium-quality one for general wear from the price and description, and purchased about a week back – of which there was no sign. It was not a particularly good day weather-wise so I would have expected the victim to have been wearing one._  
 _2) There is a right-of-way that runs along the backs of the houses on this side of the square and a door in the back wall, which is usually unlocked. Constable Billington assumes that the man came through there but as it is a cut-through for the nearby railway station it is in fairly common use, especially as this occurred near the end of the rush hour. The path from the door to the tree is loose chippings so there were no prints to be had. Thus far no-one has come forward about seeing anyone or anything suspicious at the time._  
 _3) At least two people definitely came into the garden during the times you specified. Doctor Moore Agar came with his steward to check that all was going to plan at around seven o' clock, but they did not approach the tree and were together at all times. Interestingly Mr. Rupert Agar’s statement said that he was alone in the library between six-thirty and nearly eight o' clock, and there is a door out to the garden from there. And he does not seem the sort to read books, in my opinion._  
 _4) Unfortunately I was taking more care of the body than observing reactions (apart from that of Mrs. Foliot). However I do recall that both Mr. Rupert Agar and the priest (a Reverend Ian Blackfield) both looked quite pale. The reverend smelled slightly of alcohol, by the way._  
 _5) I do not understand the relevance of this question but I thought that his clothes were rather shabby with the exception of his shoes, which were of high quality. Perhaps he had gone from being well-off to poor or _vice versa_ which would have explained the discrepancy. Possibly at one time he had had a watch as the loop where one would have been attached was partly worn through but there was none on him when we found him._

_One other odd thing has emerged from inquiries made thus far. The local stationmaster remembers a gentleman roughly matching Mr. Byland's description alighting from the 6.5 train (a semi-fast suburban, Hitchin to King's Cross), the railway-station being about ten minutes walk away. He did not get close enough to identify the fellow for sure, but he did remember that he did have a hat and had also been carrying a tattered brown briefcase or something similar, yet there was no sign of either item in or around the tree. Since the fellow left without crossing to the other platform as most people do, he could well have been heading for the cut-through._

_So, who done it?_

_Yours in anticipation,_

_Doctor John H. Watson_

MDCCCLXXVI

_Nonsuch House,_   
_Hawick,_   
_Roxburghshire_

_Tuesday August 15th, 1876_

_Dear Watson,_

_We shall be moving on to our stop in Gullane tomorrow. It has rained every day that we have been in Scotland; I am surprised that the country does not sink. I am still wet! To add to my woes, my breakfast plate yesterday contained something dark and unpleasant that was very firmly pushed to one side. There are some horrors that even I am not prepared to face, and I have to live with Mother's stories!_

_Talking of horrors, Mother is threatening to buy herself a kilt! God take me now!_

_You should recommend to Constable Billington that he might find it interesting to take a look at the recent collapse of the Cornubia Bank. I believe that at least one member of the household will be shown to have had an interest in that institution._

_Once we are in Haddingtonshire² I should have a definitive date for my arrival in London._

_Yours soggily,_

_Mr. S. A. Holmes, Esquire_

MDCCCLXXVI

_St. Oswald's End_   
_Keynsham Square_   
_London_

_Tuesday August 15th, 1876_

_Dear Holmes,_

_I hope that this either catches you in Hawick or is forwarded to you in Gullane. A most interesting development in the case occurred last night. Doctor Moore Agar had what I can only describe as a blazing row with his son and heir Rupert, their voices raised so loudly that we – myself, and Mr. and Mrs. Foliot – could hear them even from across the hallway. The boy said that he no longer needed his father’s support as he had recently done very well by getting his money out of an institution just days before it collapsed. I would assume that he was referring to the recent and unhappy collapse of the Cornubia Bank which has left many West Country investors ruined. It really was quite unseemly, the way in which he was gloating._

_This happened on Monday night and there was a further development this morning which caused me to have to resume this letter. It seems that the boy may have forged his father’s name on his original investments into that institution which is of course a criminal offence. His smugness might not be as justified as he thinks – hopefully._

_I shall write again if anything else of import occurs._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Doctor John H. Watson_

MDCCCLXXVI

_Telegram to Mr. S. A. Holmes c/o The Extra Hole, Gullane, Haddingtonshire_

_9.36 a.m., Wednesday August 16th, 1876_

_How the blazes did you know?_

MDCCCLXXVI

_The Extra Hole_   
_Gullane_   
_Haddingtonshire_

_Saturday August 19th, 1876_

_Dear Watson,_

_You should advise Constable Billington to check all gloves belonging to Mr. Rupert Agar._

_I shall be in London next Saturday. If you would care to meet me off the train arriving to King’s Cross Station at 6.2 p.m. we may discuss the case then._

_It stopped raining this morning. For almost a quarter of an hour!_

_Yours still soggily,_

_Mr. S. A. Holmes, Esquire_

MDCCCLXXVI

_St. Oswald's End_   
_Keynsham Square_   
_London_

_Monday August 21st, 1876_

_Dear Holmes,_

_Constable Billington arrested Mr. Rupert Agar today for the murder of the dead man, who turned out to have been a Mr. Alan Selborne. Blood spatters were found on a pair of gloves that he had thrown to the back on his drawer, the discovery of which caused him to break down and confess all. His father has insisted that the moneys he made be returned to the bank so it can be shared between the ruined investors; it will be precious little given the extent of the collapse but I suppose that it is better than nothing._

_There is good news from Oxford where Stamford's wife has given birth to a son whom they are calling Joshua. And they have asked me to be one of the boy's godfathers._

_How on earth did you work the case out? I cannot wait until Saturday!_

_Yours in extreme impatience,_

_Doctor John H. Watson_

MDCCCLXXVI

_The Extra Hole_   
_Gullane_   
_Haddingtonshire_

_Wednesday August 23rd, 1876_

_Dear Watson,_

_You will have to._

_I do wish you had not used that phrase, as I am compelled to tell you that 'Every Little Helps' was the title of a work by Mother last year that involved the Greek Titans using heroes half their size as sexual aids. Look, if I have to suffer that image then do do you!_

_I assume that you have had a strong drink after reading that. I must also let you know that she is now working on the sequel, 'Titanic!'._

_It is now sleeting. Horizontally! Mother not only bought that kilt but had herself photographed in it. I am so happy that we cannot be deported from Scotland – at least I hope that we cannot!_

_Yours in desperation,_

_Mr. S. A. Holmes, Esquire_

MDCCCLXXVI

Mercifully by the time I had reached King's Cross, I had just about dried out. Even better, Mother had decided to pay a 'surprise visit' to some friends of hers in East Anglia. Unfortunately for said people I knew them to be deeply unpleasant, so had decided not to forewarn them of their approaching doom. Especially as she had still been wearing that damn kilt!

Watson was waiting behind the ticket-barrier looking impatient to discover how I had so easily solved his little case. We shook hands – I detected a brief movement when it looked like he might embrace me for some reason before he caught himself – then he led me away 

“I cannot wait to get you back to the house to find out how you worked the case out”, he said fervently. 

I smiled.

“Mother insisted on booking me into the Station Hotel here for a few days”, I said. “Fortunately she changed at Peterborough so she could descend on some luckless friends in Norfolk; I was a little tempted to telegraph them a warning but I am not overly fond of them. I shall check in, then we can discuss the case.”

MDCCCLXXVI

The dining-room at the Station Hotel was opulent and I could see that Watson felt out of place in his relatively poor clothes. He definitely rose in my estimation when he ordered both coffee and bacon before pressing me for details, and rose still further when he allowed me to down a coffee before speaking. He even passed me the ketchup! 

Finally I was done and, after two coffees, ready to begin.

“The case hinged on the recent collapse of the Cornubia Bank”, I explained as he most considerately poured me another cup. “Even before our crossed letters you mentioned that Mr. Rupert Agar had done well financially in recent times. Anyone who sold out of Cornubia shares rather like those who did the same for the South Seas Company a century and a half back would have done extremely well.”

“But where did poor Mr. Selborne fit into this?” he asked.

I could see that he was impressed if not astonished at my ability to drink hot coffee straight down, and he signalled to a waitress for a further carafe. And she said that my next plate of bacon would be ready in but a few minutes. This place was good!

“The key to making money from these things is to sell at the right moment”, I said. “I would conjecture that Mr. Selborne was in a position to know that information and he unwisely communicated it to his friend Mr. Rupert Agar, who then shared it with his own friends and planned a mass selling of shares on the same day at the exact same hour. The effect was of course to cause a run on the bank and to ruin many hundreds of people, including Mr. Selborne.”

“Mr. Selborne somehow became aware of his colleague’s perfidy, and he must have threatened to go to the villain’s father over the matter. There must also have been proof of what had been done for otherwise why go to the extent of murdering him? It was one wealthy well-connected man’s word against that of a ruined man. No, Mr. Selborne had some physical proof – remember that he had that folder at the station which subsequently disappeared – and alas! that sealed his doom.”

“Mr. Rupert Agar most probably agreed to confess his dealings to his father and to return what moneys he could provided Mr. Selborne came to the house ‘to stand with him'. He admitted him through the back garden probably spinning some yarn that he did not want his disgrace to be witnessed by anyone else. However once he had his quarry at the back of the garden, he shot him; the sound of the gun was muffled because it was pressed against his victim. That in itself was indicative; it implied that the victim knew his killer well enough to allow him to get close. Mr. Agar then hung the man on the tree.”

“But why did he do that?” he asked, curiously. “Why not just dispose of the body some other way?”

“The scene of the crime was against that”, I said. “You yourself said that the passageway that runs along the back was well-used and busy at that time of an evening, nor could he move any further into the gardens without the risk that someone talking a walk from the house might have come across him. No, the false identity which he had arranged beforehand was his best chance.”

“Constable Billington said that Mr. Selborne‘s landlady had received a note from him saying that he had to take a sudden trip to America and would send for his things later”, he said. “I suppose that you are right.”

“Of course I am right!” I said, more than a little surprised at his having doubted such a thing. “Which brings me to my other news; I believe that I may have found us some lodgings available from next week. Or more accurately my father has, and from his description they look suitable.”

“Where are they?” he asked.

“Montague Street, near Russell Square and the British Museum”, I said. “The landlady is a Mrs. MacAndrew; a dour Scotswoman but a good cook or so I am told. It is just over a mile from your Harley Street, closer still to your own practice in Bloomsbury and the terms are reasonable enough. Mrs. MacAndrew says that we can go there any time to take a look and if we are satisfied to move in at our convenience.”

He looked at me shrewdly.

“Your father found rooms that are just around the corner from his and your mother's house”, he said.

He was sharp.

“But Mother tends not to descend on rented accommodation”, I said, glossing over the certainty that said parent had most certainly had our accommodation and everyone in it as thoroughly checked out by my sister Moira, just as she had done with those at Queen Square. And Watson himself.

“I am looking forward to it, then” he smiled.

I too was happy, and there was only the slightest feeling of wariness as we arranged to look at the place tomorrow. I was going to live with someone else other than a family member, and several of my siblings (annoyingly the ones that I actually liked for some reason) had on occasion mentioned that I was perhaps on occasion less than the easiest person in the world to put up with. But then Watson was entering upon a career of putting up with difficult patients, so living with me would be easy for him.

MDCCCLXXVI

_Notes:_   
_1) About £31 ($38) at 2021 prices._   
_2) Later East Lothian._

MDCCCLXXVI


End file.
